Never send flowers

CHAPTER ONE

WEEK OF THE ASSASSINS

Father Paolo Di Sio had been annoyed from the moment His Holiness had made his wishes clear.

Di Sio had even argued with the Supreme Pontiff, not an unusual occurrence, for, as the Pope had been known to remark, `I seem to be a constant thorn in the side of my senior secretary.

Indeed, Father Di Sio was exceptionally anxious, and this was the final reason that only a very few members of His Holiness' entourage knew of the change of plan. For one day in fact for slightly less than fifteen hours the Pope would leave his lakeside summer residence at Castel Gandolfo, and travel back into the boiling cauldron that was Rome in the month of August.

The cause of Paolo Di Sio's annoyance was a combination of his devotion to the Pope and his feeling that the journey was quite unnecessary.

After all, the General could quite easily have come to Castel Gandolfo for the audience. Instead, His Holiness would be put under needless strain, and all for the sake of a military man whose ego would undoubtedly be greatly enlarged by the fact that the Pope had honoured him with a private audience at the Vatican, in the dog days of summer.

His Holiness viewed the matter somewhat differently. Generale Claudio Carrousso was not simply a military man, for in the past year the General had become arguably the most famous soldier in the world-except for General Norman Schwarzkopf.

Carrousso had served with great bravery during the Gulf War, gallantly leading one of Italy's squadrons of Tornadoes on dangerous low-level attacks against Iraqi targets.

On his return from the Gulf, the General had requested a year's sabbatical during which he wrote the book that was eventually to make him a household name: The Use of Air Power for Peace.

While the title was hardly the stuff of the bestseller lists, Carrousso's talent as an author was immediately apparent to military scholars and laymen alike. His style was a subtle cross between Tom Clancy and John le Carre', and book reviewers were quick to point out that he had done the impossible by bridging the gap between the dust-dry stuff of strategy, and the fast, grabbing pace of a technothriller. Six months after its appearance in the original Italian, The Use of Air Power for Peace had been translated and published in eleven languages, and was topping the non-fiction lists in as many countries.

His Holiness recognized the General as a mover and shaker for world peace, and, as such, felt that the military man should be openly acknowledged by the Church as an exceptional power for good in this wicked world.

So it was, that, despite the scoldings of advisers, the Supreme Pontiff made the journey into Rome on a hot August morning, and met for a full hour with Generale Claudio Carrousso in the private Papal apartments in the Vatican.

It was a little after two-thirty in the afternoon, that the General emerged from a private door in the heart of Vatican City, and joined his ADC and a Vatican security officer.

Purposely, the General's party had been led from a side door into the warren of streets behind St Peter's, where only specifically authorized vehicles were allowed along the narrow road.

Though the roar of Rome's normal snarl of traffic could be clearly heard as they waited for the General's car, they could have been in a different city, and at a different period of history. Within the walls of the Vatican, as Carrousso said, time seemed to stand still. So, as they waited in this strange time warp, the General spoke, in an awed voice, of the saintliness of the Pope, and his surprising knowledge of military matters.

The small group only vaguely heard the popping sound of the motor scooter, though the General himself glanced up and saw the slightly amusing sight of a nun, in full habit, approaching, sitting straight-backed on a puttering scooter, followed, at what seemed to be a respectful distance, by his own official car.

The General picked up his briefcase, looking past the nun towards his car with the red and blue pennants fluttering in the sun. For him, this had been a great and memorable experience.

Only the Vatican security officer stood frozen with a sudden concern, staring at the nun. Very few religious societies for women still wore the full-length black habits of their order, and the man realized just how much of an anachronism this figure really was, dressed in a style which had long disappeared as outmoded.

As his brain processed the information, he saw, with a sudden horror, that the nun on a motor scooter was certainly not what she seemed. Her robes were of the kind only seen nowadays in historical movies, or on actresses playing medieval nuns on the stage.

None of them saw the nun's face, though the security officer cried out a warning, just as the scooter came abreast of the three men. The nun swivelled on the small saddle, the wicked snout of a machine pistol poking, almost invisible, from the folds of her habit.

Later, the forensic specialists would identify' the weapon as a standard 9 mm Uzi machine pistol, but by then it mattered little to the General. The nun fired three short, accurate, and deadly bursts, proving that she was a markswoman of great skill.

The Uzi was fitted with some kind of noise-reduction system, so that its soft ripping noise was almost drowned by the popping of the motor scooter. By the time she had disappeared, the General lay dead, and his two companions writhed in agony from neatly placed flesh wounds, their blood soaking the pavement.

There was no doubt that the General had been the principal target, for it was no accident that his ADC and the Vatican security officer had simply been immobilized, and not mortally wounded. In all, the killing of Generale Claudio Carrousso had been immaculately planned, and expertly carried out.

The newspapers, naturally, had a field day.

MURDER IN THE VATICAN and GENERAL ASSASSINATED, screamed from the front pages, while experts on terrorism named at least three possible pro-Iraqi terrorist groups as the most natural perpetrators.

The second assassination took place on the following day, in London.

The Honourable Archie Shaw MP was one of the country's favourite politicians, a possible reason why he had never attained any truly powerful government appointment. Certainly he was a member of the present prime minister's Cabinet, but only as Minister for the Arts, a job which kept him well clear of making life or death decisions for either his country's, or party's, home and foreign policies.

None the less, Archie Shaw was a true lover of the Arts, and fought tooth and nail for larger government subsidies in matters which fell within his bailiwick: a fact which made him the particular darling of actors, directors, musicians, painters, and all others concerned with what they saw as the United Kingdom's primary export: theatre, music, ballet, opera, and the like.

On that August Monday, Archie Shaw lunched at `Le Chat Noir', his favourite restaurant in Chelsea. With him were his wife, the' dazzling Angela Shaw, and two internationally famous theatre directors. Later the public learned that the conversation had concerned an attempt to inject massive sums of money into the country's now non-existent movie industry. It was a scandal, Archie had said towards the end of the meal, that Britain, once a prime movie-making country, had been denuded of the facilities which at one time had drawn directors and actors from all over the world.

The lunch finished at exactly three o'clock.

Farewells were said on the pavement outside the restaurant, and `The Archie and Angela Show -as they were commonly referred to in the Press walked slowly to their car which had been parked in a side street some five minutes away.

They strolled, hand in hand like young lovers, he tall, broad shouldered with one of those patrician profiles which remind people of the lineations found on coins of the great old Roman Empire, she petite, snubnosed, with blazing red shining hair falling to her shoulders.

They reached the car, which Archie unlocked, swiftly moving around the vehicle to open the passenger-side door to see his wife safely in, before returning and settling himself into the driver's seat.

They planned to drive to their small country cottage some ten miles south of Oxford.

Archie turned the key in the ignition, and died, together with his wife and three innocent bystanders. The explosion was heard over five miles away, as it ripped through the car, throwing shards of metal in every direction. One of the dead was a passing cab driver whose passenger emerged without even a graze. `I saw this great blood-red gash of fire,' this lucky man said to the television news cameras. `I can't recall even hearing the explosion, but the fire seems to have burned itself into my memory. I shall never forget it because I swear that I saw an arm come flying from the middle of the fire.

Later evidence showed that the bomb had been in place for almost forty-eight hours, controlled by an ingenious device which had allowed the vehicle to be started and driven eight times before the mercury switch was activated to detonate the twenty pounds of Semtex, wedged in a neat package directly behind the dashboard.

Nobody was surprised when the head of the Bomb Squad, a Metropolitan Police commander, gave a Press conference that evening, indicating that the explosive device bore all the hallmarks of the Irish Republican Army. There was much said about barbarity and a complete disregard for the sanctity of human life.

On the following morning, the IRA vigorously denied having placed the bomb, and on that same Tuesday afternoon, a third assassination took place. This time in Paris.

Pavel Gruskochev was another household name.

A survivor of the cold war, he had come into prominence about the same time as another great Russian writer, Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

Gruskochev had fled to political asylum in the West as early as 1964, having had his great seminal work, A Little Death, banned from publication within the Soviet Union. Indeed, he only got out of Russia by the skin of his teeth, with the hounds of the KGB baying at his heels.

The novel was published in London and Paris in 1965, and in the United States early in 1966. It was a vast and huge literary success, a triumph that would be repeated three years later with After the Onion Skins. Both of the books tore down the ragged canvas of Communism, using every device at the novelist's disposal satire, romance, the shades of real history, fear, and wonderfully vivid narratives which blew away the cobwebs of the mind.

Now, on this Tuesday afternoon in August, the month when Parisians ritualistically leave their city to the tourists, Pavel Gruskochev announced a Press conference. Every newspaper and magazine in the world had someone there, for the Russian was known for his lack of interest in the Press, nd his almost hermit-like existence.

As well as the representatives of the Press and TV, many of the author's devotees, hearing of the Press conference, rushed to be present, so when the great man stepped up to the microphone-laden podium, in his French publisher's office, he blinked, surprised at the crowd packing the room.

His statement was short, terse, slightly emotional, and could quite easily have been sent out as a written document.

`I have asked you here, because those who advise me, feel it is necessary for me to say what I have to tell you, here in public, and not as a disembodied voice informing you on paper,' he began in his halting, still highly accented English.

`This is, I think, a little like closing the door after the horse has bolted, for so many of my Russian friends have already returned to the place of their births. I have hesitated, and rightly so, for until recently I was still regarded officially as a non-person, that strange term the old regime granted to people who told the truth. Well, I am no longer a non-person." He held up a small slip of paper and a passport.

`This morning, I was informed of my reinstatement as a Russian citizen, so, it is with immense pride and pleasure that tomorrow I shall return to the place of my birth, to my roots which, even in a long exile, have remained intact." He went on a little longer, thanking people in France, Britain and the United States for their friendship, help and understanding during his years spent far from his homeland, then, as quickly as it had begun, the conference was over.

People pressed around him; reporters barraged him with questions, men and women thrust flowers into his hand, and one very tall woman, dark and wearing a broad, stylish hat that almost hid her face, handed him a wrapped package.

Later, those near to Pavel Gruskochev swore that the woman spoke to him in Russian, that he smiled at her and clutched the package to him as though it were something very precious. Certainly there was one photograph of the moment which showed him peering towards his benefactor with what appeared to be almost awe.

Ten minutes later, as he sat alone in the back of a taxi, the package exploded leaving the great novelist as though he had never been, his driver severely injured, and the traffic around the Champs Elysees clogged for several hours.

On Wednesday came the fourth assassination, though at that time nobody was linking any of these deaths one with another.

Twelve noon, Eastern Standard Time, Washington, DC, United States of America.

Mark Fish was unknown to most people. Only insiders, and the political correspondents, knew him as well as they could know any man in his shoes. As Assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence, he was usually kept lurking in the background, for the Central Intelligence Agency is like an iceberg. Everyone knows it is there, but outsiders only see the tip, for the rest is cloaked and out of sight. Mark Fish was normally out of sight.

On this Wednesday, the DCI was out of the country, so it was Fish who made the trip from Langley, Virginia, to Pennsylvania Avenue and the White House to deliver the weekly personal briefing to the President. He had been called upon to do this on several previous occasions, so it was nothing out of the ordinary.

The briefing lasted a little longer than usual, and just before noon he returned to his car, was driven out of the side entrance, and then down on to Pennsylvania Avenue itself.

The driver had to wait for a matter of two minutes for a break in the traffic, so the car moved quite slowly into the right-hand lane.

It was at this point that Mark Fish shifted his position, leaning towards the nearside window as though to get more light on the document he was studying.

Nobody either saw, or heard, the shot. The window fragmented and Fish was thrown against the back of his seat, the top of his head exploding, hurling bloody debris against the leather and glass, three `Equalloy' bullets smashing into his head.

The Equalloy round, made in the United KIngdom, is now an almost redundant type of ammunition, but it is still available; a fourth generation Accelerated Energy Transfer (AET) round, the Equalloy is designed to fragment on hitting its target. It also has all the necessary non-shoot-through requirements of presentday special forces, thereby minimizing the risk of killing bystanders. On its initial tests, the Equalloy penetrated only 2.5 inches of Swedish soap the ammunition-designers' substitute for human tissue.

Later, the DC Police Department, aided by both the FBI and Secret Service, measured and calculated the trajectory of the bullets, thereby roughly approximating from where they had come.

Among the many bystanders was one tourist who had been taking photographs at the time. One frame from his 35 mm camera yielded a small clue, for it showed an elderly man standing in almost the precise spot from which they had estimated the bullet had been fired.

He appeared to be a man in his late seventies or early eighties, dressed in jeans, an L. L. Bean checked shirt, and a blue, billed cap bearing the legend, `Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas any more. The `Old Guy', as the investigators called him, carried a thick walking cane with a duck's head brass handle. At the moment the picture had been taken, he had the cane raised, pointing directly at Mark Fish's car. Once this photograph had been enlarged and enhanced, there was little doubt that the `Old Guy' had been the assassin, and that his walking stick was, in reality, some kind of deadly weapon.

And nobody could account for the reason Mark Fish had rolled down his rear window, thereby making the assassin's job a thousand times easier.

Only a couple of international newspapers picked up on the fact that three high-profile figures, and one very senior intelligence officer, had been murdered in as many days, and in as many countries, but no link was officially made by any of the law-enforcement organizations involved.

Yet the truth was that, in less than one week, four prominent victims had died in various ruthless, brutal acts of violence. Though nobody linked the deaths, one thing was certain: each of them had been a target; each had been stalked, sought out and killed with some care and preparation; and, while the specialists in terrorism had named possible groups as the perpetrators of these killings, no organization had come forward to claim responsibility an oddity that was the one constant in the four deaths, for terrorist groups are rarely slow in claiming success after a carefully planned operation.

On the Friday of the same week, another killing took place. This time it happened in Switzerland, and the victim could not by any stretch of the imagination be called high profile. In fact, she was just the opposite, and it was this fifth death which brought James Bond into the picture.

CHAPTER TWO

GAZING DOWN AT THE JUNGFRAU

She left her hotel in Interlaken at around ten-thirty in the morning. Switzerland's Bernese Oberland always had a calming effect on her, and Laura March needed peace and quiet more than ever before.

As a child, her parents had often brought her to this part of Switzerland and she remembered her father telling her, years ago, how therapeutic it was simply to sit and look at the mountains. She desperately needed to think, allow the pain to subside, and reassess her life.

It had rained on and off all the previous day, but this morning the sky was cloudless, the deep and perfect blue seen only at high altitudes. The mountains, with their constant caps of snow, were clear and sharp against the skyline and, in the distance, she could just see the great curve of rock which looked like the breast of a young woman the reason they called that particular mountain the Jungfrau.

At the Interlaken West station, Laura boarded the train to Grindelwald. She was always amazed that so little had changed here since her childhood.

Even her travelling companions seemed familiar to her: a group of chattering young people on a day trip, led by a solemn, plump woman, bossy and arrogant; there was an unsmiling young man, wearing stout walking boots, his rucksack on the luggage rack, face buried in some guide book, out for a day or two of serious walking; a middle-aged couple, healthy and red faced, dressed in jeans and sweaters, and a dozen other people, all remembered from the long-ago days when she had gazed in wonder from the rattling train window, clutching her father's hand.

Everything was familiar, from the long slanted roofs of the chalets, to the splash of colour in window boxes, and the smell. All countries, she thought, had a particular scent to them, retained in the memory of visitors, and immediately recognizable on return. Her father had often said that he remembered the smell of Switzerland, rather than the views, and she had known what he meant. Her mother used to say it was the smell of money, but that was a family joke. The scent of Switzerland was a kind of cleanliness found in so few places these days.

At Grindelwald, she walked slowly up through the village, dodging other tourists, strolling along the crowded high pavements, pausing to look into the shop windows: picture postcards, seeds of mountain flowers, patches to sew on to jeans, little metal tags to attach to walking sticks, and mountains of food, the stores presided over by serious-looking men and women. For the Swiss, all business is serious, and Grindelwald is, rightly, a prosperous place, sitting as it does on the edge of the Glacier Gorge. For decades it has been a playground, in winter and summer, for climbers, sightseers, and long-distance skiers alike.

It was after eleven-thirty when she reached the chair lift, paying her few francs and swinging into the chair to be levitated almost noiselessly upwards, above the bright lush green grass of the foothills, the flash of a trickling stream below as the cable swung her, rising up the long slope.

She disembarked at the look-out point they called First, that boasted only a large log cabin in which delicious food was served crowded at this time of day, but the perfect place to sit and eat an omelette, fried potatoes and crisp bread, washed down with a glass of Apfrisaft.

When she had eaten, Laura walked a little way up the slope and sat on the soft grass, looking out towards the Mittaghorn range, the dark brooding slopes of the Schwarz Monch, the toy houses of Grindelwald far below, the contrast in colour, greens, yellows, the seasoned blackish green of the pine trees, and the wonderful skyline of the Jungfrau, just visible off to her far right; the awesome Gletscherschlucht, the glacier itself, and the crowning glory in the distance-the summit of the Eiger.

The mountains, she thought, were like scale models made from cleverly folded grey paper, brushed at their peaks with white powder.

David loved it here, but that was over and done with.

This was a time of healing for her battered emotions. No more David, for that was finished and she had to resurrect herself from the small death which had come only a short time ago.

As she feasted on the view, it was as if, by some trick of time and light, she were being mentally enfolded by crags, peaks, fissures.

Her father had been right, the grandeur and beauty of the view helped to put her own small concerns and pain as a human into perspective. It seemed as though this spot could magically sweep her small anguish into its proper place. The awesome wonder of the vast range of mountains was already doing its work.

When she felt the unexpected stab of pain in her neck, she thought, almost lazily, that she had been stung by a bee. She tried to put her hand up to trap the insect, and was puzzled when she could not get her arm above shoulder height.

She did not panic. It was as if she viewed her strange situation from very far away. The numbness seemed to spread from where she had been stung on the neck. First, her arms became immobile, then she experienced a not unpleasant sense of her entire body being invaded so that she could not move at all.

This is a dream. I shall wake in a moment, she thought, trying unsuccessfully to smile, for there was her dead father waving, running up the flower-dotted slope towards her. Then the darkness smothered everything.

The people who ran the small restaurant found her body just before dusk.

*

*

*

The next morning, James Bond was finishing his last cup of breakfast coffee, and contemplating a lazy weekend which included dinner that night with a young woman called Charlotte Helpful when the telephone rang, banishing all plans for the next few weeks, let alone fun and games with the pleasantly named His Helpful.

`Before we begin, Captain Bond, I'd like you to take a look at this photograph." M slid a matt eight by ten, black and white print across his desk. His mood had been sombre from the moment Bond had entered the room.

It had been Moneypenny, the Chief's secretary, who summoned Bond to the suite of offices occupied by M and his personal staff, on the ninth floor of the anonymous building overlooking Regent's Park.

`You're to go straight in, take no notice of that.

She had nodded towards the door above which the familiar red `Do Not Enter' light flashed. As Bond took a pace forward, Moneypenny dropped her voice. `He's got a pair of our sisters in there." She gave him a quick little smile, before looking away, a fierce blush scalding her cheeks. The torch she carried for James Bond was no secret to anyone in the building.

The `sisters' were a man and woman from the Security Service, MIS, introduced to Bond as Mr Grant and His Chantry a portly man, dressed in the dark-suited Whitehall uniform, and a rather frumpish young woman, sitting to attention, inflexible, with her backside perched on the edge of her chair. Both of these officers looked uncomfortable, for members of the Security Service are seldom at ease when circumstances force them to ask favours of the Secret Intelligence Service. There was little doubt in Bond's mind that they were here to crave a boon from M.

He glanced at the photograph of a young woman, possibly in her early thirties, with light blonde hair, and a pixyish, pleasant face.

`Should I recognize her, sir?" Bond raised his eyebrows in query.

`Only you can answer that, Captain Bond." M remained unsmiling.

`I am aware that there are occasional cross-fertilizations between our service and our sisters." `She's one of yours?" Bond addressed His Chantry.

`Was one of ours." Impatient, but somehow full of suspicion.

He thought he could also detect a tiny fleeting stab of pain in her voice, and saw it pass across her face, there one minute, gone the next. He turned back to his Chief. `No, sir. No, I don't recognize the young lady." M nodded, ,then looked across at Grant. `Tell him what you ve just told me." His tone was not unfriendly, but nobody could doubt that the Old Man was in one of his tough, all business moods.

Grant, in his mid-forties, had a prissy mouth and a tendency to be fussy, his hands constantly straightening his tie, or brushing imaginary lint from his trousers. Bond put him down as a desk man personnel, or accounts.

After clearing his throat a couple of times, and fiddling with his cufflinks, Grant began tentatively.

`Her name is Laura March. Age thirty-five, been with our service for ten years. Worked five years with the Watcher Division, then moved on to Anti-terrorist Intelligence. Mainly analysis of raw information.

Very good record. Knew her stuff.

For a second he paused, as if treading on uncertain ground.

`And?" Bond gave him an encouraging smile.

`She's disappeared with the family jewels?" `She's dead." It came out flat and uneasy.

Murdered, it would seem." M filled the gap.

`In Switzerland,' His Chantry supplied. `She was on leave." `Ah." The truth was out, Bond thought. MIS's jurisdiction was effective only in the United KIngdom and its dependencies, a situation which often led to ill-feeling between the two organizations.

Grant sounded a shade petulant now. `That's why we need your help. She was staying in Interlaken Switzerland. . -` `I know where Interlaken is." This time, Bond was neither encouraging nor smiling.

`Switzerland.

Little place with lots of lakes and mountains. Lots of banks and chocolates as well." Grant frowned. `You're Interlaken?" `I know it's a tourist centre for the Bernese Oberland." Bond wanted to demagnetize the highly charged atmosphere, maybe even force a smile from this somewhat pompous man. So he half sang, "Gazing down on the Jungfrau, from our secret chalet for two." Kiss Ale Kate and all that.

`The only way you can gaze down at the familiar with Jungfrau is from a helicopter or an aeroplane.

Grant looked puzzled.

`That's the whole point,' Bond snorted. `Cole Porter wrote that song as a satire on the stupidity of some operettas..

`Captain Bond,' M snapped. `We do not require a lesson in musical comedies. This is a serious business. Let Mr Grant give you the facts.

Bond, still a little irritated at having been called away from what was to have been a delightful weekend, and possibly two reckless nights with the nubile His Helpful, knew how far he could go with M, and his Chief's voice had now hit what he liked to think of as the Mutiny on the Bounty level. He closed his mouth and nodded politely to Grant.

`It's a beautiful part of the world,' Grant continued lamely.

`And it appears that she was particularly fond of it. She had been there for two days, and yesterday morning she took the chair lift up to First, a very good viewing point above Grindelwald. Last night, she was found dead, about half a mile from the chair lift staging-point." `Dead as in natural causes, or the other kind?" `It would seem the other kind.`How?" Bond looked towards His Chantry who had gone pale, her eyes reflecting the anguish he had noted earlier.

`As you know, the Swiss authorities have a tendency to work by the book, Captain Bond. The police were called, treated the matter as a possible murder or suicide, did the usual things and then moved the body to Interlaken. They did an autopsy in the early hours of this morning, and the results are both puzzling and unpleasant." `I'm used to unpleasant matters." Bond had on grim business was slipped into his own sombre mode. If you cannot beat them, join them, he considered. `I've spent the past week looking at photographs, and reading autopsy reports on four terrorist assassinations, which might just impinge on matters of intelligence, so a fifth post mortem isn't going to make me queasy." Grant nodded. `The only unusual mark they found on the body was an angry bruise on her neck, just below the right ear. The skin was broken and they recovered a tiny fragment of gelatin. Part of a capsule which had penetrated the skin.

`How?" `We don't know. The Swiss won't commit themselves.

`So what was the cause of death?" Grant frowned. `They're still doing tests.

Nothing confirmed as yet, except that whatever killed her almost certainly got into her via the capsule. I understand that they've now brought some specialist forensic doctor up from Berne.

`And this, having happened in Switzerland, brings you to the point of your visit to us?" `We've been refused permission by both the Foreign Office and Swiss security to operate on their turf. They know of His March's link with us, and they're fairly paranoid.

`Point is,' M cut in, as though annoyed at Grant for taking too long to explain the full situation.

`Point is that they will accept Scotland Yard, or one representative from us." `And we're not happy about Mr Plod treading all over one of our own,' Grant added.

`So I'm the lucky winner?" Bond's spirits rose slightly. An all-expenses-paid weekend in Switzerland even __ relatively appealing.

`You fly out this afternoon." M did not even look at him.

`They'll be holding the inquest on Monday, so you'll have plenty of time to go over the ground.

`Haven't we got anybody in Switzerland any more, sir?" `You know how it is, Bond. Cutbacks, reorganization. Yes, we have somebody in Geneva, at the embassy...

`Well, can't. . ?` `No, he can't. He's on leave. In the old days we would have had him covered, but those luxuries are gone. You go out, flying the flag, to Berne this afternoon. They'll meet you at the airport and ferry you to Interlaken." `Who's they? The cops?" `No.

Swiss Intelligence. What used to be the old Defence Department Twenty-seven disbanded last January. They've reorganized like everybody else, and one of their people will meet your flight, take you around, show you the crime scene, fill you in and hold your hand at the inquest. Your job is simply to gather details and make sure the Swiss police have done a thorough job.. `They always do a thorough job,' Grant muttered. `They're Swiss, and the Swiss bring a new meaning to the word brusque.

`You make sure they've done a thorough job." M was not to be put off. `And you make certain that their coroner releases the body to you.

`And I bring the unfortunate lady home?" `That's about the size of it." `And if I pick up any clues as to the circumstances of her death?" `You report your findings to me." M made a small dismissive gesture, indicating that, as far as he was concerned, the meeting was over.

`Sir, might I ask some questions of our friends here?" If he were going to be used as a detective, he had to conduct himself as such.

`If you must. Bond nodded, turning to face Grant and Chantry.

`His March worked in Terrorist Intelligence. Was she involved in any particular operation? Dealing with one particular group?" Grant shifted in his chair, pausing just a fraction too long for Bond's comfort. `She worked the whole spectrum,' he said eventually. `And she knew her business. Familiar with all the most visible groups from the IRA to the Middle East. .

`She had an incredible memory." His Chantry had a slightly husky voice, very attractive and, Bond decided, very sexy. He took a closer look at the young woman as she spoke. `Laura always knew who, among known terrorists, was in the United KIngdom at any given time." `She knew those who had been spotted coming in,' Grant interrupted quickly.

`Yes, she did retain the information from the daily reports the sightings by our people at airports and other entry points." Bond grunted, he was still appraising His Chantry. At first sight she had appeared to look somewhat schoolmarmish, dark hair pulled straight back from a high forehead and fastened in a bun at the nape of her neck, granny glasses, and a severe lightweight suit that did nothing for her figure. Now that Bond looked closely, he saw clearly that His Chantry seemed to be hiding her light under a bushel of little make-up, and a lot of austerity. Her large brown eyes looked steadily into his, and the curve of her thighs and breasts under the forbidding suit gave the impression of an exceptional body. Under an astringent exterior, His Chantry was probably all woman and then some.

`His March? Was she concerned about anyone in particular? I mean any one known terrorist in the country at this time?" he asked.

The two M15 officers both shook their heads.

`So, I presume,' Bond continued, `that you both worked quite closely with her?" `I am head of the Terrorist Intelligence Section." Grant sounded paradoxically superior and unhappy about revealing his exalted place in the scheme of the Security Service. `She reported to me. His Chantry is my number two, so, as such, was in contact with her on a daily basis.

Bond's instinct still told him there was a great deal missing from the simple answers. `And what about the other side of the coin? To your knowledge, did any of the terrorist groups know of her existence?" `Who can tell?" Grant shrugged. `We like to think that we're invisible, but your own service has had problems with penetration in the past, Captain Bond. None of us can be one hundred percent certain that we are not compromised." `If she had been compromised, is there any reason to believe that any one terrorist organization had a motive for taking her out?" `No!" It was His Chantry who replied, her voice rising, breaking, the single word coming out just a little too quickly.

`No! No, I really think you can rule that out.

`What about her private life?" `What about it?" Now Grant sounded almost aggressive, his forehead wrinkling belligerently.

`If she died an unnatural death, it could be of great importance.

`She kept herself to herself. Didn't talk much about her personal life,' from His Chantry, once more a shade fast and easy.

`What about positive vetting?" asked Bond, referring to the regular background checks on officers working in the twin labyrinths of intelligence and security. He cocked an eyebrow at Grant. `We still do positive vetting, even in this piping time of peace. You were her superior, Mr Grant.

`Yes. Yes. Of course. Yes." This time Grant fussed with his tie. `I regularly saw the results of her positive vetting.

`Well?" Grant spoke like a small man trying to pull himself up to his full height. `It would not be proper for me to divulge the results of a colleague's PV in the present company.

`Then just give us a pencil sketch." `I don't.

`Mr Grant, I would suggest that you either allow His Chantry to leave the room, or get on with it,' M growled. `We're all adults here.

Do as Captain Bond suggests. A pencil sketch; outline map, eh?" Grant gave a petulant sigh. `Very well." He did not actually speak through clenched teeth, but came within an ace of it. `Thirty-five years of age; entered the Service after taking the Diplomatic Corps examination at age twenty-five. A First in modern languages, Cambridge. No brothers or sisters. Both parents killed in that wretched PanAm bombing going to spend Christmas with friends in New England. No overt political affiliations. Basically clean." `Boyfriends?" `Not currently, no.

`Girlfriends then?" `She was heterosexual, Captain Bond, if that's what you're trying to ask." `I wasn't but it's as well to know. No boyfriends currently, you say. What's that mean exactly?" Grant hesitated for just too long. `She was engaged. It was broken off a month or so ago." `The fiance', then. Clean?" `Scrupulously." `Service?" `No, neither ours, nor yours.

`You want to tell me about him?" `I think that would be unwise.

`Right. Thank you, Mr Grant." Bond rose. `I think we've heard enough, and I suspect I've a lot to do before I leave for Berne...

M gestured for him to sit down again, then turned to Grant and Chantry. `You can tell your DG that the whole matter will be dealt with efficiently and discreetly." He made a gesture with his right hand leaving no doubt this time that the visiting firemen should go.

As he moved his arm, so Moneypenny appeared in the doorway, in response to some hidden signal activated by the old man.

`Moneypenny, our friends will be leaving now.

Perhaps you'd have them escorted from the building." Grant's face was a picture of barely controlled anger. Chantry, on the other hand, seemed to accept M's blatantly rude instructions as part of the normal cross she had to bear.

They had hardly left the office before M grunted a half-amused laugh. `I'm always amazed at our sister service, James." He now seemed almost amiable.

`Wouldn't trust Grant to mail a letter for me." Bond looked towards the door, his lips set in a curving cruel smile. `As for the Chantry girl, she's very upset about the death. Grant kept her on a short leash, and I suspect he'd rather have come on his own. There's something missing, sir." `Just a lot, my boy. Just a lot. Never trust Greeks bearing gifts, nor Five coming for help,. They can't bear telling the entire story, and there 5 something about the March girl that they've no intention of telling us. Just watch your back, James.

It wouldn't surprise me if Grant put some kind of leech on you in Switzerland. So take care." He began to load his pipe, tamping down the tobacco with near ferocity.

`Couple of things before you go. First, there's no convenient scheduled service to Berne, so you'll be going out in the company jet which is standing by at Northolt." The so-called `company jet' was an ageing RAF owned Hawker Siddeley 125 Series 700, in a white livery with the Transworld Consortium logo on fuselage and tail. M, careful as he was, only used the aircraft when absolutely necessary. Ever since the retreat of the Russian threat, he considered it far too high profile.

`Incidentally, you're going out as a grieving relative. The March girl only had one old aunt, living up in Birmingham, so you've been dubbed as a second cousin. Get back to me if you think Five've put surveillance on you. They're like a barrel load of monkeys when they become paranoid. Now ..` He began to give his agent some specific instructions regarding Switzerland.

At five o'clock, Swiss time, that same afternoon, the company jet taxied in, coming to a halt at the main terminal of Berne International Airport, and Bond walked quickly into the main building.

Immigration was, as always, dourly efficient, and he emerged into the arrivals hall, carrying his compact pigskin garment bag slung over his shoulder, eyes rapidly taking in the array of boards held by limousine drivers, looking for his name.

M had given him the name of his contact.

`Freddie von Grusse. Never met the fellow, but he's a "von" so probably an insufferable bore, and a snob to boot. You know how the Swiss upper crust are, James. There was no driver holding a card for Bond, so he walked further into the arrivals hall, and was about to approach the enquiry desk when a deep, pleasant female voice whispered at his ear, `James Bond?" He caught the subtle scent of Chanel, turned and found himself looking into a pair of wide, twinkling green eyes.

`Mr Bond, I'm Freddie von Grusse." Her hand was firm in his, and her elegance was of the kind rarely seen outside the pages of fashion magazines.

`Fredericka von Grusse actually, but my close friends call me Fredericka." `Can I be counted as a close friend?" It was a lame opening, but she had literally taken his breath away.

She laughed, and there seemed to be an almost tangible silver glitter in the air. `Oh, I think we will probably become very close friends, Mr Bond, or may I call you James?" `Call me anything you like." A couple of seconds later, he realised that he actually meant what he had said. She could have called him Dickbrain and he would still have smiled at her happily.

CHAPTER THREE

Fredericka She was tall, around five-eleven, which meant the full six-feet-plus in high heels. Tall and slender, though not what bad journalists would call willowy. One glance was enough to confirm athleticism in all senses of the word. She had the look of someone who worked out regularly, and took great care of her personal appearance. She also gave off that indefinable static, immediately recognizable in some women, which said she was a sexual knock-out, but on her own terms. The kind of woman who got exactly what she wanted, when she wanted it.

She wore a white flared skirt, which ended just above the knee, and swung around her thighs with every movement. A wide, studded black leather belt divided the skirt from her light blue silk shirt, decorated at the throat by a loosely knotted scarf.

Her hair, black and shoulder length, had a thick silky texture.

The right hand fall of hair-cut longer than the left, tended to drop over one eye, and she pushed it back, raking it with long fine fingers, her head tilted, green eyes sparkling in tune with her laugh.

The body of hair fell back into place as though she had never even touched it.

Fredericka von Grusse, Bond considered, would be thoroughly disliked by most women.

`Come along, then, James. We've got a nice drive ahead of us.

You want to eat first or shall we catch something on the way?" She was off, striding a few paces ahead of him, and he saw the ripple of her thighs and the firm movement of her buttocks beneath the skirt.

From long ago, he recalled a partly remembered line of poetry: ....

then (methinks) how sweetly flows; the liquefaction of her clothes.

She paused, looking back over her right shoulder. `James, there are lots of better views where we're going.

Bond walked a little faster, and with more bounce to his step than he had felt for some time.

`Doubt it, but where are we going anyway?" He felt their shoulders touch, and the merest hint of mutual attraction sparking between them.

`Interlaken, of course. Where else?" The woman was a witch, moving their invisible emotions close together with speed.

`Then, as you say, we'd better get moving. Can we eat in Thun?" `Naturally.

`Oh, just one thing." He placed a hand lightly on her shoulder, feeling her flesh through the silk, like static on his fingers.

`Yes?" She turned, slowing to a halt.

`I hate to do this to you, Fredericka, but I need some ID. A man can't be too careful these days." Once more the silver dust of her laugh spread around them. `Okay, James. I'll show you mine if you'll show me yours.

`Chance would be a fine thing." He flipped open his wallet to reveal his service ID, beneath its little laminated shield, and Fredericka reached into a large leather shoulder bag, producing her own card. As she returned it, he caught a glimpse of an automatic pistol, snug in a holster built into the bag. He had been denied carrying a weapon into the country, and suddenly felt naked and vulnerable.

Within ten minutes, they were settled into her three-year-old white Porsche, which was in need of a wash, and heading out of Berne on route six, following the river Aare to Thun, the lovely old town which always reminded Bond of the Frankenstein story. If you stand in the small Town Hall Square the Rathausplatz in Thun, and look up beyond the Rathaus itself, you can see the great castle looming above you, and the whole view is reminiscent of every Frankenstein movie ever made.

She drove fast, but with. experienced skill, her shoes kicked off, stockinged feet dancing on the pedals, and her long, slim arm moving almost lazily over the gear shift. From the moment they left the airport parking area, she made it clear that they would not talk business.

`We're supposed to be an item,' she said, glancing at him, a delightful smile glowing from mouth and eyes. `That's what my people have decreed, and who am I to disobey them?" `Who indeed?" Bond clutched at the corner of his seat as she negotiated a long bend just a fraction too fast for his liking, but hanging into the turn, not allowing the car to drift. `By item, you mean lovers, I presume?" `Correct. We're to stay where she stayed, and my papers show that I've just flown in from London with you. You're a relative, aren't you?" `Distant cousin. Was that your people's idea?" `A joint decision with your Chief. Now, I'll tell you the rest over dinner. Oh, and don't worry, I won't hold you to the entire details of our cover." `Why a cover at all?" `Later. Over dinner, I'll tell you.

Silence for half a kilometer, then, `You speak exceptional English." Too late he realized how trite that sounded, and heard her laugh again.

`And we have been getting such good weather this August, yes?" She changed up as they reached a straight stretch of road, piling on a little speed. `I ought to speak good English, my mother came from Hastings, where your kIng Harold was taken by William the Conqueror." `I know the story. Harold got an arrow in his retina." `You know what one of the Norman archers said? "That's one in the eye for Harold."' Again, the laugh. `My father was Swiss, but I got my degree at Cambridge." `What in, history?" `Modern languages. Why would you think...?" `History? Your exceptional grasp of the Battle of Hastings.

`Oh, I have an exceptional grasp of many things, James." `I'd bet on it. You weren't up at Cambridge with the deceased by any chance?" `Later, James. I'll tell you everything later." In less than an hour they were in Thun. They parked, then walked across to the old Falcon, an hotel in which Bond had spent many happy days years before. Less than fifteen minutes later they were seated in the restaurant, being fussed over and looking forward to dinner, for the Falcon has a reputation for good food.

For the first time since their meeting at the airport, Bond now had a real opportunity to study more than Fredericka von Grusse's body.

The laughing green eyes and Curly Simon mouth were her best assets, for, while her skin was clear and flawless, the rest of her face was long, her nose slightly crooked and her jaw a shade square.

Not beautiful by any standard, but interesting, replete with character.

She gazed contentedly at him across the table, making him aware that the eyes and mouth contained more than simply surface humour.

`So, Fredericka. You're ready to tell me a story?" `Some of it, yes." She rolled a piece of smoked salmon on to her fork, popping it daintily between her lips. `You were right, of course. Part of the reason they've assigned me to this is because I was up at Cambridge with Laura March. 1 didn't know her well, but we attended the same lectures, had the same supervisor. After Cambridge I saw her occasionally after all we were both in the same business but I really didn't know her well." `So why the cover? Lovebirds off on a spree. Us, I mean." `She was murdered, James. That's fact. We all know that now, and in our line of work `We can't be too careful." `Exactly. You have any idea why she was killed?" `Do you?" `I wouldn't have asked if I knew. We're completely in the dark, so, as you can imagine, there's a certain amount of panic. Have we got part of some terrorist cell operating on our turf? Did someone choose Switzerland as a killing field? I know it's paranoid, but we need information, and we're not getting it from her colleagues. That's one of the reasons we refused them the okay to come over and work the case." `You know as much as I do." Bond leaned back in his chair pushing his plate away, swallowing the last morsel of his salmon. `In fact you probably know more than I do. Her colleagues were about as chatty as a bunch of turtles. I saw her immediate superiors, with my Chief, and we both knew they were holding something back. You knew she worked the anti-terrorist beat?" `Of course, that's why we're nervous. Also, the method was odd and smacked of the old Bulgarian DS." She was speaking of the Durzharna Sigurnost, the former Bulgarian intelligence and security service. The DS had once contained a ruthless death squad, which at one point had access to the highly secret laboratory run by the KGB's Operational and Technical Directorate. It was from liaison between the KGB's First Chief Directorate, the DS, and OTD, that plans were made for the secret killing of a number of Bulgarian emigre's, using exotic poisons like the feared ricin which was almost undetectable.

`Tell me about how she was killed." He leaned forward as a waitress, plump and smiling, cleared their used plates and set down dishes of succulent lamb chops and roast those delicious potato cakes flavored with onion and cheese together with tomatoes stuffed with ground lamb's liver, mixed with herbs and spices.

Initially, Fredericka had asked Bond to order for both of them. `I never know what I want." She had looked up at him, under flirting eyelids. Now she nodded and smiled as she began to serve him, and the waitress brought the Beaujolais, which Bond sipped, nodding his approval.

Only when they had started to eat, did Fredericka continue to talk.

`The method? I have the entire report with me." Her eyes flicked in the direction of her shoulder bag which she kept near to her all the time, constantly allowing a hand to drift towards it, touching the leather as though anxious to reassure herself that it was there. `The weapon was undoubtedly a high-powered air rifle or pistol.

Maybe one of the type that uses a CO2 c,barge.

You know about the capsule in her neck?

Bond nodded. `What was in it?" She swallowed a piece of lamb, raising her eyes to heaven, signing that the meat was incredibly good. Even in the way she ate, Fredericka gave the impression of being a very sensuous woman. She was also fond of the tactile senses, reaching over to touch the back of Bond's hand with her fingertips, tracing her fingers across her own breast, then giving a short sigh. `We've been unusually lucky.

Our own people might've gone on looking for weeks. It just so happens that the cops in Berne are hosting three Japanese forensic specialists. They're over here for a year, examining European methods, and advising on some of their techniques. It was an off-the-cuff thing. They thought one of these men might be interested.

Unpronounceable name, but he spotted a couple of things, pointed them out, suggested the tests. In a word, the capsule contained tetrodoxin." `As in blowfish?" `You've got it. They don't come more exotic than that.

`Remind me." So, as they ate, Fredericka talked, at first almost casually, about tetrodoxin.

Tetrodoxin was the poison of choice of the ancient Japanese shadow warriors, the followers of Ninjitsu, the Ninjas. They would use it to anoint the now familiar shuriken throwing stars and for centuries one of the most secret arts of Ninjitsu was the method for preparing the deadly nerve poison.

During World War Two one of the legends of those who fought in the jungle, was the story of the silent night-killers who moved, hooded, like cats through dense foliage, reaching out to touch sentries, or sleeping soldiers, who would die of `snakebite'. Only later did military doctors realize the bite had been delivered from a piece of sharpened bamboo dipped into tetrodoxin.

The poison comes from the reproductive sac of a species of blowfish called the tetrodontidae. This fish is a native to the coastal waters of Japan and Hawaii, and, as it is a pretty creature, it can often be seen gracing tropical aquariums, in homes as well as zoos.

Tetrodoxin is found in the female fish, and then usually only in the mating season February.

At this time, the female egg sac is swollen with around two to three liquid grams of tetrodoxin, which is enough to poison three to four hundred humans. To retrieve the sac from the fish without breaking it, necessitates alarming the fish so that it does its best aggressive trick, inflating itself to two or three times its normal size. At that moment you slit the side of the creature with a razor-sharp knife and remove the sac intact.

In recent years many schools of the Japanese culinary art now openly taught the same ancient secret for removing the poison, for removing it is necessary to make a particular delicacy harmless.

Skilled chefs would do this trick, for the tetrodontidae is the main ingredient in the gourmet dish Fugu. Yet, even now, some are not completely adept at removing the sac, and each year there are still a number of deaths in Japan from eating Fugu which has been improperly prepared.

`It's a horrible way to die." She shuddered, her skin suddenly pale at the thought. `Complete paralysis and respiratory failure in twenty seconds, the Japanese doctor says." `Fast, though." Bond sipped his wine, holding a little in his mouth before swallowing, savouring the flavour. `Over before you know it. He mention that they still use it for suicide?" She shook her head: a cross between saying no and driving the spectre of death by this kind of poison from her brain.

`I read somewhere that people who want out can buy the stuff from chefs. They get drunk then prick themselves with a needle soaked in the wretched venom." `The cops've found the place where the sniper holed up." She was distancing herself from the effect, returning to the first cause. `We can go up there tomorrow. Whoever it was made a comfortable hide for himself, slightly higher up the mountain.

`Must've been pretty sure of his target, unless our His March was chosen at random." `That's exactly what the cops said. In fact it's what they're afraid of, a killer taking pot shots at people with poison darts or capsules. Not the happiest of thoughts, a random poisoner on the loose." `Which is easier to deal with? The random killer, or some terrorist organization intent on revenge, or headlines?" `One's as bad as the other, really. Scares the hell out of me." `And you don't look as if you scare easily." `I don't?" `You're a professional, so..

`Don't you get scared, James? Don't all of us?" `Of course I do, but only when the situation warrants it. We're only going through the motions, investigating a murder. We're working like a couple of homicide detectives, there's no danger in that." She cocked an eyebrow, and swallowed another piece of lamb. `That's how you think of it?" `Naturally." `Well, I've seen the body, read the evidence. It's like somebody being bitten by a deadly snake, and the snake hasn't yet been caught." `Yes, but...

`But nothing, James. Didn't they tell you to move carefully, to watch your back?" Her face was still pale, and there was a new, concerned, haunted look in her eyes.

`My Chief mentioned it, yes, but only in the context of the poor dead His March's employers." `Well, perhaps he was playing it down. My boss spelled it out to me. Anyone investigating the death is at risk.

If it's a one-off terrorist thing, nobody's claiming responsibility, so they could well have expected a long delay before we worked out the cause of death if we discovered it all." `And if it's some crazy, I suppose he could still be lurking around. That how it goes?" `Exactly.

We've been told to take great care. If it is a crazy, we re all still at risk. If it's terrorists, the same applies. So, yes, James, I am scared, and I'll be surprised if you don't feel something up on that mountain tomorrow.

`There's something else?" Somehow he felt that she was holding back; delaying facing the truth.

`So, what's turned up, Fredericka? They've found where the shooter holed up; we know how the girl was killed. Have the cops had any other ideas?" `She's stayed there before.

`In Interlaken?" `At the same hotel. At the Victoria-Jungfrau.

Three times previously. Each time with the same man. Once a year over the past three years." `They IDed her friend?" `No. I've seen stats of the register. Mr and Mrs March. His passport showed him as March, we have the number, and her former employers ran a check. The passport was applied for in the usual way, three years ago. You're going to love this, James, and it might make you almost as frightened as I am. It's her brother's passport. His name was David.

Bond scowled, suddenly looking up into her face. `She was an only child. That's what her service said." Fredericka smiled, and the nervous, haunted look vanished for a second, then returned. `That's what her service thought. I only saw the signal traffic, and got the documents half an hour before you arrived. It appears that she wasn't quite telling the truth. She did have a brother. An elder brother.

Black sheep of the family. He died in a hospital for the criminally insane five years ago." It was Bond's turn to look serious.

`Which hospital?" `Rampton. He'd been there since the age of twenty, and he was five years older than her.

`And..." Bond began, but the waitress was beside them again, asking about dessert. Without much enthusiasm, Fredericka ordered the cherry tart, and Bond went for the cheese board. `When in Rome,' he smiled.

She remained passive, as though the spectre of this man, David March, lay across the table between them. `It appears,' she said, `that the family moved from the North of England to Hampshire after it happened. It was a pretty big case at the time." `David March,' Bond mused, the name hung on the lip of his memory, but he could not quite get to grips with the man or his crime.

`He killed five girls, in the North of England,' she said, her voice calm now. `At the time, the Press drew some sort of parallel between March and ... oh, who were they? Monsters? The Moors Murderers?" I.

`Brady and Hindley, yes. Kidnapped and abused children, then killed and buried them on the moors above Manchester. Sure, a cause celebre. Brady's in a secure facility for the criminal insane now, and Hindley's still in jail. That case broke, oh,. some time in the early sixties ... An appalling business.

Terrible ... yes, monstrous.

`Well, David March made those two look like good fairies. He did his particular thing in the early seventies. I read the file while I was waiting for you to land. He was quiet, unassuming, polite, an undergraduate at Oxford, reading law. The psychiatrists' reports are interesting; the details of the killings are ... Well, I'd prefer that you read them for yourself, James. I was scared before, but after reading what her brother did. ..` `So we have a whole series of bogeymen terrorists, a lone random crazy, and a victim whose brother ...` He stopped as the name David March suddenly connected with a jigsaw puzzle in his head. `That David March?" He looked at her, knowing his eyes had widened. `The one who kept the heads?" She gave a fast little nod. `See for yourself.

Fredericka reached for the leather shoulder bag, but Bond shook his head.

`No, when we get there. I'll read it then. How in heaven's name?

I mean how didn't her people unearth it during her positive vetting?" `How indeed? I rather gather there're a lot of red faces in London.

She didn't even change her name. Nobody in their right mind should have given her a sensitive job with that family skeleton in her closet." `It was her brother, not her." `Read what the shrinks have to say before you make statements like that. Lord, James, think about it.

If you remember only small details of the case, he was an horrific, walking, talking, living monster. Yet, two years after his death, sweet little Laura, his sister, lets someone forge a passport with his birth details. What's that make her? To allow someone to use his name, his details. Read it, James. Please just read it." She had reached down and taken a heavy folder from out of the bag just as the waitress came over to ask if they would like to take coffee. They could use the residents' lounge, she said.

So it was, amidst the normal, pleasant chatter of guests enjoying holidays, or passing through on business, that Bond glanced at Fredericka, who sat beside him, impassive, as he opened the folder and began to read about Laura March's brother.

He was only two paragraphs into the file when the hair on the back of his neck bristled, and rose in fear.

CHAPTER FOUR

BROTHER DAVID

He had barely read the first four paragraphs before the whole story came flooding back. At least the facts read in the newspapers at the time returned vividly. Some of it had been lurid, sensationally reported, with the usual sensitivity of ghoulish newspaper men, but he was certain that, even with I.

the gruesome highlights which became public knowledge after the trial, there were still some things that had been left out. He recalled talking, some years before, to a senior police officer who had assisted in identifying the body of a child buried in dense woodland and found some six months after her murder.

`We don't even bring some things out in court,' the detective had said. `I identified that child's fingerprints certainly, but they had to remove the hands and bring them down to London. I never saw the poor kid's body." The bulk of the file was a detailed and annotated report on the case by the police officer in charge, a Detective Superintendent Richard Seymour, and, even though the lengthy document was couched in official police jargon, the language did nothing to reduce the sense of blind horror.

The events took place in the town of Preston around thirty-five miles north-west of Manchester deep in the old cottonmill country.

Bond thought of grey granite buildings, and the uncompromising, no-nonsense though cheerful people of Lancashire who were the actors in this story of terror.

When Christine Wright, of 33 Albert Road, Preston, went missing, just before Christmas 1971

her name was simply added to the missing persons file. She was twenty-two, blonde, very pretty and at constant odds with her parents who, she was always telling her friends, still treated her like a child. The file did pass across Superintendent Seymour's desk, but all the indications were that young Christine had run off: she was always talking about getting away, living on her own, or finding Mr Wright-this last was, naturally, a little running joke with her friends. Later it would smack of grim gallows humour.

She did tell her closest confidante-one Jessie Styles, who worked with her at the National Westminster Bank that she had met someone truly exciting. The report gave the friend's exact words: `Chrissy said she thought this lad was right for her. She wouldn't talk much about it. Said he was a bit of a toff, had money. Said it could lead to a new life. They were in love, but then Chrissy was always in love with the latest boyfriend. The difference this time was that she didn't give me any details. Usually she'd have photographs. Tell me everything. She wouldn't even tell me the name of this one." In the early spring of 1972, a pair of hikers literally stumbled over what was left of the missing girl. Christine Wright was identified by her fingerprints-originally, the police had gone through the motions by taking prints from her room at her parents' house in Albert Road.

What `was found by the hikers was simply the torso, in the early stages of decay. The head had literally been hacked off, and the remains buried in a grave less than eight inches deep, near one of the roads leading across the moors above Manchester.

It can be very cold in that part of England, and the freezing temperatures that had persisted from early December 1971 to April of `72, had left the body in a well-preserved state, for it was only just beginning to decompose with the first warmth of spring.

Superintendent Seymour began investigating on the day after the remains were identified. He did not get very far. In his notes there was a query regarding the father, and the constant arguments between him and his murdered daughter; but the policeman, after some long question and answer sessions, noted that he thought Christine's father was not even `in the frame' as the English police slang has it.

On the Tuesday of Easter week, Bridget Bellamy told her parents she was going to spend the night with her friend Betsy Sagar. She had not returned by the Wednesday evening, so it was her mother who eventually telephoned Betsy's home. At first she was angry. Even though Bridget was twenty-one years old, Mrs Bellamy liked to think that her daughter always told her the truth. Bridget had not stayed with the Sagars, nor had she been at work on this, the following day.

It was only after Betsy Sagar had owned up that Mrs Bellamy called the police. For the past week, Bridget had been on a high. She had met the man of her dreams, she had told her friend Betsy. They were in love, and he had asked her to marry him.

His mother was dead, and the family had a wonderful house which the new boyfriend would inherit, together with a fortune, when his elderly, ailing father died. Bridget Bellamy was a blonde, and the one thing she did not tell Betsy was the name of this wonderful man, though she did mention that he lived in his own house near that of his parents.

Bridget's remains were discovered, again on the moors, in early July. She was more difficult to identify, but there was no doubt, just as there was no doubt that her head had been severed possibly with an axe and a saw.

There were two more cases during the summer.

Both blondes, and in their early twenties; both found headless, soon after telling friends that they would shortly be announcing their engagements.

In those days the name `serial killer' had not yet entered either police or public language, but Seymour did not have to be told that they had one killer on the loose in his area. Someone who had already murdered four times, who favoured blonde females, and whose diabolical work included severing their heads possibly keeping them as souvenirs.

The Superintendent's notes over the next two weeks gave the impression of someone under great stress. There were no leads, no clues, and he was doing his best to keep the Press at bay. At one point he wrote: `If this continues I shall have to let the truth come out. All blonde young women in the area are obviously at risk, but if I release the full details there will be both a panic and a concerted attack on us by the Press, who will want to know why we have not arrested anyone. If there is another killing, we will just have to give in and make a full statement. This man is a maniac. I am no forensic specialist, but it is certain that the decapitations are performed in a frenzy, and the two medical examiners who have helped me on this case are both of the opinion that the girls died from the blows to the neck in other words, died from decapitation. I dread another missing persons' report.

What he feared occurred in the last week of August. Janet Fellowes, aged twenty-one, blonde as they came. However, Janet was different. Her friends spoke of her, not unkindly, as the Pony Girl `Because she let anyone have a ride,' one of them said. Also, Janet talked. On the night she went missing she told Annie Frick who, the Superintendent noted, was probably a member of the same pony club, that she was really having some fun with a stuck-up young man. `I been teasing him stupid,' she was reported to have said.

`Keeps saying he's in love with me, but I know what he wants and he'll get it tonight.

Janet had also said that he would be okay for a good time, but he would not be around for a while.

The reason, she told Annie, was that he was a student: `Says he's up at Oxford University. Has to go back for the new term." Those words constituted the first, and final breakthrough.

There were twenty-four undergraduates in the Preston area. Only fifteen of them were up at Oxford. David March was the third young man to be interviewed by Superintendent Seymour.

Giving evidence at the trial, at which David March pleaded guilty by reason of insanity by then, his only true option Seymour merely said that after a number of questions, March had admitted to the offences.

Bond had been right.

Not everything came out in open court. The Superintendent's official report told the entire chilling story.

The March family lived in a large eighteenth-century house, standing in four acres of garden on the outskirts of Preston. Behind the main house were substantial outbuildings, one of which originally had been a coach house. This, David's father had completely restored and made into a roomy two-storey cottage so that David, having obtained a scholarship to Christ Church, Oxford, could have his own privacy, and not be tied to his family during the vacations.

David was packing, getting ready to return to university when Seymour arrived, accompanied by a detective sergeant, and his first impression was that here he had a well-set-up young man: a quiet, good-looking, scholarly type; confident and with a high IQ. He was later to confide that he had immediately scratched March from the list.

They sat and talked in a large, book-lined living-room, and the detective began a gentle probing, showing him photographs of the girls, taken in life; talking of David's future; and slipping in questions about his activities on the significant dates. At the same time, Seymour had the opportunity to look at the books on the shelves. Most were concerned with law, but one whole section was taken up by books on the occult and comparative religion.

David March behaved perfectly normally for the first thirty minutes or so: eager to answer questions, apologizing for the mess, offering coffee. Then, Seymour noticed a sudden change in him. He seemed to be distancing himself from the two policemen, his head cocked on one side, as though listening for something or someone near by. In the middle of answering a question regarding his hobbies and other activities at Oxford, David suddenly said, `They say you've come to look after them." His voice had changed to a dreamy monotone.

`Who?" The Superintendent realized that he could have simply answered in the affirmative.

`The oracles. They're not all gathered yet-but you know that.

Isis says there must be at least six. I have only gathered five.

`Does Isis speak with you often, David?" The policeman was interested in Egyptology, so was familiar with the facts. Isis was possibly the most important goddess of the ancient Egyptians, and among March's occult and religious works, he had seen at least four books concerning worship and the ancient Egyptians.

`It's an honour. A very great honour, but you know that, if she sent you." At this point, Seymour had written that David appeared to be in some trance-like state. `Isis, mother of all things, lady of the elements, the beginning of all time. Sister-wife of Osiris. Speak ...

Speak through the oracles I have created for you.

Written baldly on the page, Seymour admitted that the words seemed to be the rather dramatic ravings of someone mentally disturbed. In his report, he wrote, `David's voice seemed to change, echo, become distorted. It was the most frightening change I have ever witnessed in a human being. Even his face appeared to alter. I felt cold, while Sergeant Bowles later stated that he experienced the feeling of something terribly evil in the room with us.

`She speaks through the oracles. She says there are enough. That you will take charge of them." David March was utterly wrapped in this bizarre belief. `It is just as she told me. They have started to speak in a chorus." The Superintendent added, `It seemed very important to him that we believed what he said. A matter of extreme significance, not in any legal or judiciary sense. This was a man proclaiming that he had done what was asked of him." `Everything,' March continued. `I did all that she asked. They were picked with great care.

Fair-coloured white women. I showed them love, as Isis commanded, and each was sacrificed just as she told me, at the exact time and under the correct conditions. I promise you it was done according to her word, for she is the mother of life.

She would speak only through the oracles.

Through them she says you will take them from me.

`Good, David." Seymour realized that he was trembling. `Where are they?" `They're safe. I've kept them safe.

`Then it's time for us to see them.

The heads were in large jars sealed carboys floating in formaldehyde, turned pink from the blood which had flowed from the terrible ragged necks. The serrated skin flapped, creating an eerie sense of life. The carboys had been placed in some obvious order in the large refrigerator in David March's kitchen: two were on a top shelf, one in the centre middle and two more on the lowest part.

March even had a pair of great padlocks on the door of the thing, and the heads moved as he opened up, their hair lifting in the liquid, their dead eyes staring with half-surprise and half-terror, the pinkish stain below the horrible jagged necks rising and adding an almost supernatural glow in the confined light.

`Talk to them,' March said in a whisper which had about it a sense of wonder. `Are they not marvelous, the way they speak so softly?" Sergeant Bowles vomited, and there was a side note from the Superintendent saying that he suffered from nightmares for some time after.

David March's trial, while sensational, did not yield everything to the public. His plea of insanity was so strong, and supported by both the defence and prosecution, that only the bare facts came out.

Certainly the Press reported hyped-up stories gleaned from the victims' friends, and from bits and pieces they scavenged from the gardener and live-in cook at the March seniors' house but only after the verdict of guilty but insane was returned, and David had been sentenced to be `Detained at Her Majesty's pleasure' which is the British way of saying life plus ninety-nine years in an institution for the criminally insane.

The trial was almost an anti-climax. It was the brutality of the murders, and the discovery of David March that overshadowed everything else.

The picture was so strong in Bond's mind that he shivered, looking up, surprised that he sat in this pleasing Swiss hotel, other guests' laughter and talk going on around him. The long report had taken him almost half an hour to read, and, even though it was written baldly, without emotion, the Superintendent had somehow conveyed all the revulsion and shock. Seconds before, Bond had felt he was in that kitchen, with March and the refrigerator, looking at the hideous sight of the five heads floating in their clear, thick, glass carboys.

Now he was staring straight into Fredericka's green eyes which seemed to pull him in, hypnotically, as though they were whirlpools drowning him. Then he shook himself free and saw that she was gazing at him as if his own sense of fear were being transmitted to her. The dread passed between them like static.

`You see what I mean?" She poured coffee for him. `Black?" she asked.

`With a little sugar." His own voice seemed to come from far away.

The detective's bland report had the power to stir, like the strength of some long-forgotten force which returned to influence mind and action. `And this is the victim's brother?" he asked, almost of himself.

`Read what the shrinks have to say. That's the clincher, and it's one of the reasons why Laura had to keep the business covered up. He reached out, took a sip of coffee, then said, `I don't think I need to even look at the conclusions of the shrinks." Bond had always remained dubious of the psychiatrists' powers.

`Let me guess at what they had to say,' he smiled, trying to bring humour back into Fredericka's eyes. `I imagine that one of the first things they hit on was that David March had nursed an unhealthy interest in things occult since he was very young.

Right?" She nodded. `The Egyptology had begun as a kind of hobby, harmless and instructive. As he grew, he started to believe that the real truths about the universe could be found only in ancient Egypt.

His parents became concerned when they found he had built an altar, in the garden, to worship Isis when he was only sixteen." `I'm not playing Sherlock Holmes,' he gave a short, almost humourless laugh.

`But my next guess is that the mother had a dominating personality.

That her will was law in the March household, and that it was not only David who was affected by her, but also his sister, Laura which is why this is important to us." `Yes. Two of the psychiatrists spent a long time taking David back through childhood and his teens. Mrs March appeared to have been some kind of martinet. She was also a bit of a religious fanatic. Laura was only, what fifteen?

sixteen? when her brother was arrested, but the trauma went quite deep, because by then her mother had absolute control over her in matters religious. She, Mrs March, was a practising Christian, but took everything to extremes.

Sundays in the March household were like stepping back to Victorian times. Church in the morning and evening, reading the Bible or some other worthy book-in between: no games, nothing frivolous." `I should imagine that young David told the same story to each of his victims,' Bond mused.

`Which story?" `That his father was old and ailing, and that his mother was dead. We know that's what he told the second one Bridget Bellamy." `He admitted that. It seemed he really considered his mother dead." `Makes sense. Did they help him at all I mean at the institution?" `They diagnosed a complex series of symptoms.

He seemed to be a very unhealthy mixture, a witch's brew of all the worst kind of mental problems manic depressive, psychotic, hysteric, psychopath. They controlled him with drugs for a while, but he was highly intelligent. Went through long periods I mean months at a time of appearing perfectly normal, likeable, friendly Then, out of the blue the terrors would strike. -`There was a need to kill?" `That's what was said. He tried to murder another inmate, and also attacked a nurse on one occasion. Nearly did her in.

`Mmmm. And, from all this, you think Laura was also affected?" `Don't see how she could avoid it. One of the shrinks had a very long session with the father, and came to the conclusion that he was seriously unbalanced. The entire mating situation was fraught with dangers. A hyper-religious, superdominant mother, and a weak, mentally unstable father. They produced one monster. It makes you wonder if they spawned two of them." `Let's say Laura March was unbalanced.

She's the victim here, so, when we begin to examine her murder, we have to take her possible mental state into consideration." He gave another short laugh, heavy with irony. `Her colleagues must be going through all kinds of hell. Courts of Inquiry, investigations on those who did her PVs. Couldn't happen to nicer people." He looked up, and saw the fear still deep in Fredericka's eyes. Touching the bulky file on his knee, he said, `This thing's really spooked you, hasn't it?" `More than I can say. I was concerned up on the mountain, at the crime scene. This story's so horrible that I'm genuinely frightened. Damn it, James, in their wisdom, our respective services want us to go in there and carry out our own clandestine investigation. I'm even nervous of looking through Laura's effects." `The cops haven't taken them away?" `As a favour to us, the room she had at the Victoria-Jungfrau in Interlaken has been left as they first found it." `They've removed nothing?" `That's what they say. Of course who knows when you're dealing with cops. The room's been sealed. The hotel expects us, but, since reading this stuff, it's the last thing I want to do." She paused, her hand going to her hair, once more raking it with splayed fingers.

`James, couldn't we stay here for the night? Put it off until morning?" A weak smile briefly lighting her eyes, and her intentions quite positive. `It's so nice here, no ghosts. We could comfort each other." The pause lasted for almost thirty seconds.

`We could just as well comfort each other in Interlaken, Fredericka, if that's what you have in mind." `Yes, but.

`But it's best to face things like this head on.

You say the hotel's expecting us. We should go.

Really we should." She looked away, then back at him with a wan smile, reaching across the low table, allowing the tips of her fingers to touch the back of his hand.

Then she nodded gravely and slowly picked up her shoulder bag, ready to leave.

As they pulled out of the car park, Bond caught a glimpse of another car's headlights come on. It was one of those almost subliminal experiences: he was aware of the car starting up, and preparing to pull out, a few slots to their right and behind them.

In the sodium lamps illuminating the car park he thought it was a red VW, but would not have put money on it. When they reached the turn-off back to route six, he thought he saw the same car again, too close for any comfort, though maybe too close to be a professional.

While not dismissing the possibility of a tail, he put it on the back burner of his mind. No experienced watcher would use a red car, nor would he so blatantly call attention to himself by staying so near.

Less than an hour later, they pulled up in front of the imposing Hotel Victoria-Jungfrau-a building which still retains the splendour of the British Victorian architectural influence on so many large Swiss hotels. There had been no sign of the red car once they had got fully under way.

Inside, there was the usual gravity over the formal registration: a neat, unsmiling dark-haired under-manager, whose little plastic nameplate revealed her to be Marietta Bruch, watched them as though intent on taking their fingerprints. She then went through the passport routine before saying that she was so sorry about what she actually called `the untimely demise of your relative' Then: `You have, I believe, papers from the police?" Fredericka smiled, digging into her large shoulder bag, carefully keeping it below the level of the reception desk so that nobody could glimpse the pistol. `Yes, I have them, don't I, darling?" She beamed, giving Bond a quick, raised eyebrow.

`Well, I gave them to you, but I've known things go missing from that handbag before now." He turned away, giving the porter a hint of a wink.

The porter regarded him as though he had just ordered malt vinegar with Dover sole.

She pulled out the official documents, passing them across to the redoubtable Fraulein Bruch who inspected them closely, as though looking for possible bacteria. `These seem to be in order,' she finally pronounced. `Would you like to see first your cousin's room, before you go to your own? Or do you wish to settle in?" It was all too obvious that the hotel wanted them to check Laura March's room as soon as possible.

`The police have already given permission for the room to be cleared once you have been through her items." Marietta Bruch gave them a bleak smile, behind which Bond detected the not unnatural desire of the hotel management to get the murdered girl's effects out of the way, and have the room free to rent. `We have ample storage space for her cases, if you wish to make ~... `Yes,' Bond sounded decisive. Yes, we understand, and I think it would be best if we looked through her things now. It will be easier for us also. And we will, of course, ask you to keep her cases until matters have been arranged." Fraulein Bruch gave a sharp, official nod, then asked, `Mrs March's husband?

When she arrived this time, she said he was ill and wouldn't be joining her. I hope it's not serious. She said it wasn't." `Then she didn't tell you the truth. Mrs March's husband died several months ago,' Bond lied.

`Oh!" Fmulein Bruch looked genuinely shocked for the first time.

Then again, `Oh! They were such a devoted couple. Perhaps that's why...?" The thought trailed off as she picked a key from the rack.

`Perhaps you would like to come with me?" She came around to their side of the reception desk, back on form, curtly instructing a porter to take Mr and Mrs Bond's cases to 614. She put a great deal of stress on the Mrs Bond, as though clearly saying that she did not believe a word of it.

Laura March had opted for an obviously cheap and cheerful room.

`It is not one of our luxury accommodations." Unteffuhrer Bruch as Bond now thought of her-broke the seals and turned the key in the lock.

`She made the reservation at short notice, and said one of our cheaper rooms would be convenient." Inside it was a basic hotel: a narrow bed with a side table and telephone, one built-in wardrobe, a chair, a small writing table, and a closet-sized bathroom into which were crammed all the usual conveniences.

The under-manager nodded to them, said that when they were finished, if they came back to reception she would have them escorted to their room, which, `is one of our more luxurious suites'The smile clicked on and off, fast as a neon sign, and she backed out.

Bond did the bathroom, noting that there had not really been enough room for Laura to spread out her make-up and toiletries; she had just managed to get most of them into a mirrored cupboard above the hand basin. Her preference seemed to be Lancome, and he noted a small plastic container of pills, medically prescribed with the address of a chemist in Knightsbridge on the label. The police had probably removed a couple for analysis. He slipped the whole container into his pocket and squeezed out to find Fredericka going through the clothes hanging in the wardrobe.

`Nothing remarkable." She flicked through the garments. `One basic black, for evenings, one white, one grey suit-that's nice ` peering at the label `ah, Marks and Spencer. That is fairly cheap stuff, but good value, I think. Two pants suits, spare pair of jeans.

Shoes. Nothing." `Go through the pockets." It came out as an order.

`No, James, you go through the pockets. I'll deal with the accessories." There were three small drawers running down the right hand side of the wardrobe, and as Bond started to feel and fumble through any pockets in the hanging garments, Fredericka began opening the drawers, the bottom one first, like any good burglar.

`Nothing in any of the pockets." He completed the jeans as, she opened the top drawer.

Fredericka's hands disappeared into lace and silk. `She was a good customer of Victoria's Secret. Look, James. Pretty,' lifting several pieces of highly feminine underwear for him to see.

He nodded. `That mean anything to you?" `That she was sexually active, or had been until she came here.

`Really?" `Girls buy underwear like this for men to see and remove. I also make purchases from Victoria's Secret, though it hasn't done me any good recently." `Then Laura could've been in the same boat." `I think not. This stuff is . . . Well, it's blatant, and it conforms to a pattern. She had a friend who liked certain things. I, on the other hand, just take a good guess. Still hasn't done me much good." `That could change, Fredericka. Who knows what might happen in the good Swiss air." He had moved over to the small writing table and began to look through the hotel folder which contained brochures, stationery and ... `Good grief. I can't believe the cops didn't find this." He pulled out two sheets of hotel writing paper folded in half. A letter, signed by Laura. She had large, bold handwriting. Very large, for she said little and managed to take up one and a half sheets of paper, with great loops and little circles used for dotting the `i' `What is it?" Fredericka was at his shoulder. He could smell her scent and the delicious musk of her hair.

Bond moved a fraction so that she could read the letter. There was no addressee, but Laura had written: David My Dearest, Well, as I told you, I have returned to our old favourite place. Nothing changes, the mountains are where they have always been. I also think of you all the time, but know that you are now dead as far as I am concerned. Yet you are everywhere here. Perhaps I should not have come, but I needed to be close to something we both shared.

It has rained all day and I have mooned around the hotel, tried to read, looked out on the mountains which are invisible with the cloud.

Tomorrow they say it will be fine, so I shall go to our favourite place.

Oh God, David, my brother, my lover, I do not know what to do.

As ever, my dear dead love, Your Laura.

`Jesus,' Fredericka said quietly. `James, let's get out of here." He nodded, for there was a terrible, creepy feeling, as though the dead woman were in the room with them. If he had any faith in the supernatural, Bond might even have believed that the monster David March, and his sister, Laura, were both there, chuckling furtively from the small bed. For the second time that evening he felt the short hairs rise on the back of his neck.

Carefully folding the letter and slipping it into his pocket, Bond turned to face Fredericka. She was ashen, trembling, tears starting at her eyes, the marks of shock springing from her, as though she had suffered a wound. He wrapped his arms around her, knowing that he too was trembling.

`Yes, Fredericka. Things like this are enough to spook anyone. Let's go." He locked the door behind them, and they rode in silence down in the elevator to the reception desk where the stern Fraulein Bruch looked up without a smile.

`I'm afraid we can t deal with all of my cousin s effects tonight." His voice was back to normal: level and confident. `It's been a long day, so we're going to have to ask you to wait until tomorrow. I'll do it, myself, first thing in the morning.

Marietta Bruch allowed a brief look of irritation to cross her face before saying that she understood perfectly. Snapping her fingers for the porter, she instructed him to show Mr and Mrs Bond to their room.

There was one bedroom with a king-sized bed which had a reproduction Victorian head and foot black metal bars rising as though caging the two ends, and huge ornamental brass bedknobs, polished and gleaming. The spacious sitting-room had been remodelled, contrasting oddly with the bedroom. It contained a suite of black leather furniture, a businesslike desk, circular glass table, television and minibar refrigerator. Bond felt an involuntary chilling shudder as the tiny fridge brought David March's horrible cold storage vault vividly back to mind.

The large french windows, at the far end of the sitting-room, led to a long balcony which overlooked the front of the hotel. Fredericka had gone straight out on to it as soon as the porter had been tipped and shown out.

Bond followed, standing beside her, looking down on the steady parade of locals and tourists out on their after-dinner stroll in the well-lit streets, part of the ritual of any Swiss tourist resort.

By now the air had a chill to it, but they stood close together, in silence for a few moments, until he gently put an arm around her shoulders, leading her back into the room and guiding her to the long, black settee.

`There has to be a rational answer to this." He held the letter between two fingers and thumb of his right hand. `We are certain that David March died five years ago?" `Absolutely. There's no doubt." Colour had returned to her cheeks, but her voice still retained a trace of fear. `I've seen the death certificate a copy anyway-and..." `What did he die of?" `A brain tumour. Nothing to do with his mental state, which had really gone downhill by then.

David March became a walking, grunting vegetable in spite of the drugs. Three months before he died, the doctors noticed indications of severe headaches, and eye problems. They did all the usual things, X-rays, a CAT scan, the lot. The tumour was inoperable. He died in great discomfort, in spite of high-dosage painkillers." `And do we know if Laura saw him?" `No. None of his family ever visited him. For them, it was as though he had ceased to be." `Then there are three possibilities." He indicated the letter again. `This is either a plant, which seems quite likely-because the cops didn't remove it or Laura was writing to someone else, someone she thought of as a brother-lover; or, the last theory, that she was also unbalanced, which could mean it was a piece of mental fabrication on her part. First, I think, we have to make certain it really was written by her.

He crossed the room, picking up his briefcase, thumbing the security locks and opening it to reveal a laptop computer with a portable fax machine lying next to it. `How our trade has changed,' he laughed. `There was a time when n:\y briefcase was a lethal weapon, now the armoury is almost totally electronic." He did not add that the case, in fact, did contain a couple of concealed items that could be lethal if used properly.

After reorganizing the modular telephone plugs, and switching on the fax machine, he took a clean sheet of the hotel stationery, placed it on the glass tabletop and wrote a suitably cryptic message as a fax cover page. This he fed into the machine, dialling the safe fax number in London. The cover sheet went through, followed by the two pages they had removed from Laura March's room.

`By the morning we should have a simple fax back, on the hotel's machine. It'll simply say yes or no. If it's yes, then we have to work out what little Laura was up to fantasy or reality." `You only asked about the letter?" `I've asked them to identify the handwriting as Laura's, and to recheck the facts regarding David March's death.

We'll get some clues in the morning, and first thing I'm going to go through her room again. You stay here, the place has a bad effect on you.

She gave a dry little laugh. `You were completely unaffected by it, yes?" `No. You know I wasn't. We were both spooked." He went over to the little minibar fridge.

`Brandy? Vodka? Whisky? What d'you fancy?" `Brandy I think." He smiled at her, allowing his fingers to brush her shoulder after he had placed the glasses on the table. She still looked thoroughly shaken.

Bond poured from two miniature Remy Martins. He rotated his glass, watching the amber liquid as it swirled around. Then he took a sip.

`This should help relax both of us. We really should get as much rest as we can. Tomorrow's going to be a long day." She did not look at him, but nodded, as she put the glass to her lips.

`I'll use this couch, here. You take the bed." Still Fredericka did not reply, and after a while Bond said he would shower and leave her in peace. She was sitting, staring into space when he returned, having unpacked his garment bag, showered and slipped into the robe provided by the hotel.

She left the sitting-room, saying only that she would look in and see him before she went to bed.

Bond, feeling very restless, poured the last of the brandy into his glass and sat back to watch the CNN news. Half an hour later he barely heard the door to the bedroom open, and he just caught the whisper of clothing behind him. Looking around he saw Fredericka, framed in the doorway. She wore nothing but a filmy triangle of silk and lace, her hair gleamed, and the green eyes were wide open, so that he again felt she had the ability to drown him with a look.

`Ah, Fredericka's secret.

`Your secret, James." He rose and she came towards him, moulding her body to his, one hand reaching up, cradling the back of his head in her palm, fingers outstretched, pulling his lips on to her mouth.

`It's been a long time,' she whispered. `But I must have some comfort tonight. Please." The last word was not a plea, but something else which came from deep within her. Then, slowly she led him into the bedroom.

As he entered her, she let out a little cry of pleasure, rough at the back of her throat: the sound of somebody parched who sees a means to the slaking of thirst. For a second, he saw the face of someone else, long lost, instead of Fredericka, then it was gone as her own face and body worked a particular magic.

Neither of them heard the door to the sitting-room click open, nor the soft tread of the person who crossed in front of their door, for, by then, for a short time, the bedroom had become a raft adrift and far from land.

Then, with no warning, Bond softly put his hand over Fredericka's mouth.

`Wha ?` she began, but he called out loudly, `Who's there?" From the sitting-room a woman's voice, embarrassed, said, `The maid, sir.

I'm sorry, I thought you might want me to make up the room.

`No. No, that's all right." He smiled at Fredericka, pulling a face.

`That could have been very embarrassing,' he whispered. `I'd better go through and put out the "Do Not Disturb" sign." `If you have to. Bt be quick about it or I'll start again without you.

He went through into the sitting-room, put out the sign and slipped the night chain on to the door.

On his way back he saw his briefcase and, for safety's sake, carried it into the bedroom. In the back of his mind something nagged at him. The maid's voice. He thought that he had heard that voice before but could not identify it.

He put the briefcase down at the end of the bed, not knowing that the damage had already been done.

Later, Fredericka ploughed furrows down his back with long splayed hands, leaving deep scratches, and they moved together, alone. For a long time nobody else existed but the two of them, as they blotted out darker dreams and deeper horrors.

CHAPTER FIVE

LITTLE PINK CELLS

Bond's eyes snapped open, and he became alert, just before the telephone made its soft purring sound, heralding the wake-up call he had ordered for six a.m. He reached out, picked up the telephone and, after two or three seconds of listening, began to chuckle.

He was used to being wakened by recorded voices which, in most hotels, have now replaced the more personal touch of a real human being telling you it is six 0 clock in the morning, that the weather is good, bad or indifferent, and hoping that you will have a nice day.

Certainly, the wake-up call at the Victoria-Jungfrau was a recorded message, but with elaborations that could only be Swiss.

There was the tinkle of a music box through which girls' voices faded in and out, wishing the listener `Good Morning' in German, French, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, English, Japanese and as far as he knew, Urdu.

This elaborate mixture certainly caught your attention, and he listened to it for a full minute before cradling the receiver, and gently shaking Fredericka's naked shoulder.

Gradually, with many protests, she woke up, blinked a couple of times, and then gave him a long, pleased smile a cat-who `d-licked-the-cream look, which Bond realized was probably being reflected in his own face.

She wanted only coffee for breakfast `preferably intravenously' so he dialled room service and ordered a large pot of coffee, with whole wheat toast.

As soon as he replaced the receiver the message light began to blink: a fax, they said, had come in from England overnight. He instructed them to send it up immediately. Within minutes, a porter was at the door, handing him a sealed envelope.

He read the message, sitting on the edge of the bed, wearing the crested towelling robe. The fax was short and to the point: `Identification positive.

Send original immediately by courier." It was signed `Mandarin', the highest priority crypto used by M, which meant the Old Man wanted Bond to go through a courier routine involving two telephone calls to Geneva, and being physically present when the messenger arrived to pick up the letter.

Still naked, Flick draped herself over his shoulder.

`Anyone ever tell you it was rude to read other people's mail?" He glanced back at her.

`Sure, but does a fax constitute mail? You can pluck those things straight off the telephone lines; they've all read it downstairs at reception, hoping it would contain something juicy - -` `And it doesn't.

`Well, in a way it does. Laura wrote the letter.

What's your courier service like?" Bond playfully slapped her hand away.

`Wouldn't you like to know? Come to think of it you probably do, you Swiss being so efficient." She kissed him lightly on the cheek and gave him a wicked little wink. `Actually you use the same little man as the French Mr Hesk in Geneva. We've often thought that could be terribly leaky." He pushed her back on to the bed, holding her down under his hard body, kissing her eyes, and then her mouth. Before matters could again get completely out of hand, a knock at the outer door signalled the arrival of breakfast.

They sat opposite one another, not speaking, she sipping cup after cup of strong black coffee, he admitting, grudgingly, to himself that the egg was almost, but not quite, done as he liked it.

Eventually, Fredericka spoke.

`I'm not usually like this.

`Like what?" `Oh, I suppose, easy.

`I didn't think you were. The chemistry was right, and it was a night to remember.

Outstanding. A night to dream about." `That's true. You were outstanding. Can we do it again some time?" `I was banking on it. I always try to bank on things in Switzerland." He smiled at her, their eyes meeting. Again, he had that familiar sense of being able to drown and lose himself in the green depths of her eyes. Quickly he shook himself out of the mood, saying he had to organize the courier.

He brought the briefcase through from the bedroom, but when he came to operate the security locks he was surprised to find that they were already set to the correct eight-digit code.

`I could have sworn. .` he began, knowing that he had automatically set the tumblers after sending last night's fax. It was something he always did without thinking, like breathing, yet, for a moment, he had second thoughts.

Swiftly, he clicked the locks open and raised the case's lid.

Everything appeared normal until he opened the small buff folder into which he had put the original letter. It was empty: Laura March's bizarre unaddressed, and unmailed, message to `David' her `lover and brother' was as though it had never been.

`Something wrong, darling?" Fredericka sat at the small table, looking at him with an expression of innocence that strangely worried him.

`You tell me?" he asked, unsmiling.

`What is it?" `I said, you tell me, Fredericka. There were only two of us in this suite last night. You saw me lock my briefcase. I slept like a proverbial log..

`So did I, eventually." The ghost of a smile on her lips and a touch of bewilderment in her eyes.

`You sure you didn't go sleepwalking?" `I don't know what you mean." `Then I'll tell you. I put the March letter in this case last night. I then locked it, using a sequence that even,my masters in London don't know. Now, s carefully unlocked it, and the letter is gone." `But.. `But, apart from me, you're the only person who could have done it, Fredericka. Come on, if you're playing games for your bosses, it would be better to tell me now. Save any further accusations and unpleasantness.

`I don't know what you mean! James, I was with you all night.

Surely you know that. Why would I want to...?" `I have no idea as to why, but you're the only possible suspect." She slowly rose from the table. `Then you're crazy, James. I didn't touch your bloody briefcase, and if you're implying that I invited you into my bed simply to steal something, then ... Oh, hell, what's the use? I never touched the bloody case." In a second her attitude changed from warm and loving to an ice-cold anger. Red patches appeared on her cheeks as she turned and walked quickly towards the bedroom. `I suggest you examine other possibilities, James. Also you can find another woman to brighten your nights." The door slammed behind her, leaving Bond kneeling beside the briefcase.

Indeed, he thought, she sounded genuinely angry, but that was often the best defence for the guilty. He cursed quietly. She was a trained security officer and could, therefore, quite easily have read the combination code when he had unlocked the briefcase. Lord knew, he had done it hundreds of times with people dialling telephone numbers.

Nobody else could have crept in during the night ... He stopped, cursed again. Of course, there was somebody else. The maid who had come in and almost caught them in the bedroom or had she? How long had the maid been in the sitting-room before he heard her? He recalled thinking that he had known the voice.

Then he remembered the car he thought had tailed them from Thun.

It was just possible that an unknown other had managed to get in and steal the letter. After all, he was pretty well occupied for quite a long time before drifting into a sweet and dreamless sleep.

Whichever way the theft had been accomplished, he was still to blame, and there was no other option but to apologize to Fredericka, give her the benefit of the doubt, and watch her like the proverbial hawk.

He went to the bedroom door and tapped on it softly, calling her name and then trying the handle.

She had locked it on the inside, and the next hour was spent apologizing, followed by the not unpleasant human ritual of `making up His message to London was a careful combination of necessary information and excuse.

Like any other intelligence officer, Bond was adept at covering his back. This time he did it with greater care than usual, referring to an unexplained incident, quite out of his control, as the reason for the original letter going missing. By the time he saw M in London, he would have thought out some logical excuse. The message also asked for his service to check on possible security service activity in Switzerland. For good measure he mentioned the red Volkswagen. After sending the fax, Bond took a scalding hot shower, followed by a freezing cold one, to open the pores and stimulate the nerve ends. He shaved and dressed, talking to Fredericka all the time, as she sat at the dressing table preparing her face for the day ahead.

By this time they were running late for their meeting with the local police in Grindelwald, so on their way out, Bond paused by the reception desk to tell the stern Marietta Bruch that they would go through His March's room on their return. She answered him with a clipped, `Ja?" and her eyes threw invisible stilettos at him. He was certainly not her most popular man of the month.

Though she had more than accepted his apology, in the ultimate way that a woman could, Fredericka appeared to have withdrawn again. She was not the ice queen, nor was there obvious anger, but the conversation finally dwindled into one of monosyllabic, sometimes terse, responses, and she drove out to Grindelwald in near silence.

The police presence was obvious. Two cars and a police van blocked the little road to the chair lift, and a large sign, in three languages-German, French and English-proclaimed that the chair lift up the mountain, to the First area with its great view of the Grindelwald Basin, was closed until further notice. The entrance was also blocked off with yellow crime scene tape. A uniformed inspector stood, with a plump, untidy-looking man in civilian clothes, by the chair lift entrance. The plainclothes man held a pigskin folder loosely under one arm, and paid scant attention to their arrival.

The uniformed officer obviously knew Fredericka, for he greeted her by name and, in turn, she introduced Bond to `Inspector Ponsin'. He nodded gravely, and turned to the civilian.

`This is Detective Bodo Lempke, of the Interlaken police department, in charge of the investigation." He waved a hand between them, flapping it like a fish's fill.

`I already know Herr Lempke,' Fredericka said somewhat distantly.

Lempke gave them a smile which reminded Bond of the kind of greeting he might expect from an idiot, for the man s face had about it a lumpish, peasant look, his lips splitting into a wide curving clown's mouth.

`So,' he said in uncertain English, the voice gruff and flat, with little enthusiasm. `You are what my friends in the Metropolitan Police call "funnies", yes? Read that once, funnies", in a spy yarn, and never believed it until my British colleagues said it was true, what they called you." He laughed, mirthless and without the smile.

All in all, Bond considered, Bodo Lempke was the most dangerous type of policeman. Like the best kind of spy, the man was totally grey, lacking any colour in his personality.

`Well,' Bodo continued, `you wish to view where the deed was done, yes? Though there's nothing interesting about it. Few clues; no reasons; except evidence which gives us the name or assumed name of the killer." `You have a name?" `Oh, sure. Nobody tell you this?" `No." This one, Bond thought, was as tricky as a barrelful of anacondas. His type was usually described as one who had difficulty in catching the eye of a waiter. Mr Lempke would have had problems catching the attention of a pickpocket, even if he had just flashed a wad of money and crammed it into the sucker pocket at his hip.

Fredericka rode up the chair lift with Inspector Ponsin, while Bond drew the heavy Bodo Lempke who certainly carried enough weight to tip the double set of chairs slightly. It was a beautiful, short ride up the slope during which Lempke remained silent except to remark on the cause of death.

`You were told of the tetrodoxin, yes?" `Yes." Fight innocuousness with blandness.

`Exotic, no?" `Very." `Very exotic?" `Exceptionally." `So." At the First viewing point, several policemen, uniformed and plainclothes, were doing what Bond presumed to be yet another careful search of the area which was marked off with more crime scene tape. A small group of men and women stood beside the long, log hut which was the restaurant.

They looked dejected, as well they might: with the chair lift closed, their usual business would have dried to a trickle of probably discontented policemen looking for they knew not what.

The air was fresh and clear, while the view from this vantage point was almost other worldly. Bond had his own reasons to feel overawed by mountains. For him, their grandeur an overworked word when people described the peaks and rocky graphs of the world's high places was tempered with respect. His parents had died on a mountain and, since childhood, while he was often moved by the beauty of the crags, bluffs and jagged outcrops of stone reaching towards the sky, he was also aware of the dangers they represented. To him they were like wanton beautiful women beckoning sirens waiting to be conquered, yet perilous, requiring deference and care, like so many of God's great wonders.

In spite of the warm sun, he shivered slightly, turning to see that Fredericka had come from the chair lift to stand close beside him.

She had said he would feel something strange and frightening in this place, and she had been right. Sites of sudden death, or evil, often gave off signals of fear, just as old places houses, stone circles, ancient churches seemed to hold good or evil vibrations trapped in walls like inerasable recordings. Fredericka's eyes gave him an I-told-you-so look, and Bodo Lempke coughed loudly.

`I show you where the body was found, yes?

Where murder happened. Always good for the laugh." He treated them to his mirthless smile and set off, guiding them between the tapes that marked a pathway to a small enclosure. The screens which the police had originally set up around the body were still in place, and signs of sudden death remained two gashes in the soft springy turf where Laura March's shoes had scarred the ground when her legs had involuntarily shot out and stiffened as the deadly capsule poured the poison into her bloodstream.

`We have snapshots." Lempke reached into the pigskin folder.

`They're not exactly your average holiday snaps, are they?" Bond leafed through the stack of eight by ten glossies, all of which showed Laura March in death at this very spot. Apart from an unnatural rigidity, she looked oddly peaceful.

`Sleeping beauty, yes?" Bodo took back the photographs.

`Dead beauty,' Bond corrected, for, in life, Laura March had been undoubtedly attractive. He felt irritated by Bodo's seeming callousness, but tamped down his anger. Cops the world over seemed to develop a hard second skin when it came to sudden death.

Lempke turned and pointed up the smooth green slope, towards a small outcrop of rock.

`When the forensic folk examined the body first, they drew my attention to the bruise on the back of her neck I have snapshots also of that. We took some bearings from the position of the body, worked out a possible trajectory. It's up there, sniper's hide." `But you had no idea that the bruise came from something fired at the victim." `This also is true. Could have been inflicted from very close, but there were no signs that anyone else had been in this spot. I used brain." He tapped his forehead. `I watch sometimes the television of that detective, Hercule Poirot, by Agatha Crusty..

`Christie,' Bond corrected.

`That's the one. Yes, he calls the brain his little grey cells, no?" `Yes." `Then also that's what I use. Little grey cells, only I think mine are possibly pink. I have a liking for red wine. Okay?" There was really no answer to that, so Fredericka and Bond simply followed Bodo up the neatly marked track, rising towards the little outcrop of rock, which was also cordoned off by crime scene tape.

`This is where the sniper laid his eggs." Bodo made a small gesture to the area immediately behind the rocks.

Laid his eggs? Bond thought, and knew in that moment his first impression of the man had been correct. Bodo Lempke, with his slept-in appearance, and feigned naivete', coupled with a disarming misuse of the English language, was as sharp as a razor blade. He almost certainly suspected everybody of being guilty of something until he, in person, proved otherwise.

`You see,' Bodo continued. `You see how the marksman had a clean shot. Straight down, sixty metres: a good clear shot with plenty of cover." `How do you know? Did the shooter leave a calling card?" Bodo gave his blank stare, followed by the imbecilic smile. `Sure. Of course. People like this always leave the visiting cards. Part of their stork in trade. They like you to know they've been here, and this one for quite a long time was here.

Overnight, in fact.

`Overnight?" `Came up as one person. Went down as someone completely different. It rained, quite hard, like dogs and cats even, on the day before Miss March died. The shooter got wet and cold, then dried out the next day when the sun came out and when his victim rode up on the chair lift. See, the ground here was softened by rain. He left perfect marks of his body." Behind the little cluster of rocks there were indentations which undoubtedly showed that someone had lain there for a considerable period.

Lempke gave them his fast humourless smile.

`Come, he said, with a conspiratorial wink.

He led the way up the rise to a small clump of bushes, also corralled by crime scene tape. At the base of the bushes was a shallow hole, around two feet square and a foot or so deep. `Maybe he planned to come back for his stuff, but we got here first. I have it in my car.

`You have what in your car?" from Fredericka.

`Everything he needed except for the weapon, of course, and the other personal items he took down on the following day." `Such as?" `You don't believe me? You think I'm oaf of detective. Come, I will even buy you lunch at one of my favourite restaurants here. Captain Bond, you accompany the pretty lady, I'll follow. Meet you at the bottom, I have to get these flatfooted policemen out of here. They want to open up the chair lift this afternoon so that the crowds can come up and admire the mountain view." And gawp at the place where a lady got herself killed." `What is gawp?" Bodo kept his mouth open, waiting for the reply.

`A lower-class British term for stare. Like gawping at me with your mouth open." `So. Good, I learn something new. Gawp. Is a good word." `You don't like him much, do you?" Fredericka asked as they sat, swaying down on the chair lift.

`Cunning as a fox, and he knows far more than is good for him." Bond reached out and took her hand. `Am I forgiven yet?" `Maybe. Wait and see. I'll tell you tonight." Ah." `What interests me, James, is that this policeman seems to know much more than we were led to believe." `Bozo Lempke." `His name is Bodo, I think, James." `I know; but I like the name Bozo better. Bozo the clown. Lempke drove like a short-sighted racing driver well past his prime. Rarely had Bond felt so insecure in a car, and Fredericka looked both white and shaken when the policeman finally pulled up outside a small, Mom and Pop restaurant a few kilometres outside Interlaken.

Being Sunday, when Swiss families tend to eat out, the place was full, but Bodo was known, and they soon found themselves in a private room behind the main restaurant. Lempke waved aside all question of Laura March's death until after they had eaten. `You go into a church to pray,' he muttered, `so you go into a restaurant to eat. This is well-known fact, and I enjoy eating." This became all too clear over the next hour and a half as he efficiently put down two helpings of raclette, that simple, yet wonderfully aromatic, dish of cheese melted over potato, served with pickled onions and gherkins. He also ate three succulent rainbow trout to Bond's two and Fredericka's one.

Two extra large slices of cherry tart, heaped with cream, followed, and he drank the best part of a bottle of red wine with the meal. It was only when coffee was served that Bodo looked satisfied.

He gave an eccentric wink, rubbed his hands together and announced that they should now get down to business as he really did not have all day to waste.

`My superiors tell me that, as the officer in charge of this case, I am to afford you as much help and information as possible." He looked from Bond to Fredericka and back again, as though waiting for questions.

`So what did you find hidden up there, in the hole under the bushes, Bodo?" `Everything he couldn't take back down the mountain.

Particularly as he wanted to go down as a different person." `What d'you mean by everything?" Fredericka leaned forward to light a cigarette.

`Everything he couldn't carry down. It was all stashed up there.

`Such as?" `Such as a large canvas holdall. Very dampened by rain and from its contents." `Which were?" `Waterproof camouflaged coverall with hood and gloves, battery-warmed waterproof sleepingbag, the remains of food-from what the military call a ratpack and a thermos flask. Also one spare CO2 cartridge, so we know what he was using: a high-powered gas-operated rifle. He also left some special attachments for his shoes. Make himself look taller with them.

`And he came up with it? Anybody see him?" `Sure they saw him.

Coming up and going down. One of the men operating the chair lift has identified him, even though he looked quite different both times.

`How?" `How what?" `How did he look so different?" `His tallness, or shortness, depending which day you're talking about. Here, I have artist's impressions." He delved into the pigskin folder, which had obviously been restocked since they were up on the mountain, and placed two photographs of line drawings on the table.

The first was of a middle-aged man, slightly oriental in appearance with a short drooping mustache and thick-lensed spectacles.

As the legend at the side of the drawing told them, he was a little over six feet in height. The raincoat looked very English, probably Burberry, reaching down to lower calf length. This man carried a canvas holdall and a thick walking stick.

Lempke touched the drawing with a stubby index finger. `Came up a tall man, wearing a raincoat." He touched the second drawing. `Went down as a cleanshaved man, around five feet eight inches tall, in black cords and a rollneck, carrying a small rucksack. Too small. If he'd bothered to bring a larger size he could have taken everything back with him." Certainly the drawing showed someone quite different. Much younger, the face more open. The only thing he had in common with the first drawing was that he also carried the heavy stick.

Lempke smiled, producing a third drawing which he laid between the first two.

`This how he was identified?" Bond's mouth tightened.

`Of course. By his walking stick. Very thick, sturdy, with a brass handle shaped like a duck's head." `You think that was the `I even know the man's name, for it was the real person who went down or as real as we'll ever get. They identified him at his hotel.

An Englishman by the name of David Docking.

They had his passport details, as did the local police, which is the law. Arrived on the Friday night, dressed as you see him there." He touched the second drawing. `Only luggage was the rucksack quite small and left on the Saturday morning. The head porter of the Beau-Rivage, where he stayed, saw his air ticket. He was due to fly from Zurich on a British Airways flight on the Saturday evening, so it won't surprise you that nobody called David Docking was on that particular flight. Mr Docking left the Hotel Beau-Rivage at ten o'clock on the Saturday morning, and has not been seen, or heard of, since. `So, Mr Docking went up the mountain on Thursday morning. .

`Afternoon. Around four in the afternoon.

`Went up on Thursday afternoon, looking like a middle-aged man with a walking stick. Holed up there overnight, and came down, as himself, on the Friday, when he booked into the Beau-Rivage.

Lempke nodded slowly. `That's how he did it.

One of the men who help people into the chairs noticed the unusual walking stick on the Thursday.

He was also on duty during the Friday afternoon, and his eye caught the stick again. "Hallo," he said to himself. "A lot of people are going around with thick sticks with brass duck's head handles."

Bond grunted, thinking, yes, there was an elderly man with a stick just like that in Washington only two days before Laura March died.

Mentally he made a note to check out flights.

Could the elderly man with the stick and the funny hat, caught on film near the White House on the Wednesday, have been the same man who took the chair lift at Grindelwald on the Thursday? The timing would work, and he had little doubt that it could be done easily.

`You see, my little pink cells have worked overtime. The man was already waiting for his victim, and he was quite prepared to suffer minor discomfort like a night out in the rain on a bare hillside to get her.

Fredericka spoke. `You think she was a definite victim? The target?

You don't think she could have just got unlucky? That David Docking, or whatever he's called, waited for the first good random target?" `Even in the rain there were quite a lot of people up there on the Thursday, Fraulein von Grusse.

No, this joker-is right in English, joker? waited rot one person.

He waited in cold and rain for Laura March.

`Then he must have been pretty certain that she'd turn up,' Bond mused.

`One hundred percent certain. My pink cells tell me she was the target, and he waited for her only.

He knew she would turn up. `As you are the police officer in charge of the case, d'you think you're ever going to catch him?" `Docking, or whatever his real name is? Oh no.

No, I won't catch him. Already I think he has long left Switzerland. In any case, I am to hand over my report to your Scotland Yard people, Captain Bond, so that they can take the case forward. As soon as the inquest is over, tomorrow, I act only in an advisory capacity. Had you not been told this?" `No. There was some anxiety in certain quarters that Scotland Yard should be kept out." Lempke nodded ponderously. `So, yes. Yes, I understand this, but all is changed as from a very short time ago. The instructions were waiting for me when I came down from First. Really I'm talking to you as a little favour.

I pretend I don't get the new orders until I return to my headquarters." Once more the small conspiratorial look. `This, I suppose, means you don't know either.

`Don't know what?" `Don't know that you also are off the case." `Off the ?` Bond began. `How in blazes ?` Again, Lempke touched his nose with his right forefinger. `I consider myself a judge of good character. Just thought you should know what I know before you are sent into whatever oblivion is prepared for funnies like you. Now, I think I should drive you both back to Grindelwald, so that you can collect your car. Then I can discover they've taken you off the case, and show my own contrition and surprise." * `You think they've taken both of us off, for real, James?" They were driving back to Interlaken, with Fredericka at the wheel.

`If that's what Bodo says, then it's probably true, though I can't figure him. Why would he want to pass on all that information if he knew we were already being cut out of the loop?" `Maybe he's concerned that someone's trying a cover-up.

`Who'd want to do that?" `Your sister service? MI 5?" `They haven't got the clout. My Chief wouldn't go for it. Could be they're furious with me for losing the letter, or maybe there's some kind of danger in our being left in the field." `I know the dangers, so what's new?" He said that he would tell her once, and once only, then quickly ran through his suspicions concerning the assassination of the CIA assistant director in Washington especially about the elderly man in the L. L. Bean shirt and the billed cap with the legend `Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas any more', and of the walking stick with the brass duck's head handle. `I'm on the restricted file list, and there aren't many of us. The chances of two people using a similar weapon within forty-eight hours of each other must be pretty slim.

I just want you to know about this in the event that we are really being taken off the case.

`But I don't want to be taken off it, James. It's the kind of puzzle that I like. I want to solve this business." For a moment, she sounded like a spoiled child.

`We might not have any other option." `Do you want to be taken off it?" `Of course not. `What're you going to do then?" `If I'm off the case? I have some leave coming up. I'll demand a month of it now and follow my own private inquiry. But I don't really think that's going to happen. `Give me your private number in London. Then I can always call y~ The first person Bond saw as they finally walked into the foyer of the Victoria-Jungfrau was M's Chief of Staff, Bill Tanner. He was standing in deep, serious conversation with a gaunt-looking woman, severe faced, and with iron-grey hair pulled tightly back from a high forehead.

`Hell,' Fredericka whispered. `That's my immediate superior. Gerda Bloom, known in the business as Iron Gerda." `Sorry about this, James." Tanner came swiftly towards them, as Iron Gerda cut Fredericka away from them like a stalking horse. `I'm very sorry about it, but my orders are to put you on the first flight out of here. M's furious about the missing letter, and there's been a complaint from the hotel which, if it's true, means you're up to your neck in fertilizer.

I'm to stand over you as you pack, and there'll be no further contact with Fraulein von Grusse."

CHAPTER SIX

SMOKE AND MIRRORS

`The Swiss are furious, and so am I!" M barked.

He strode up and down behind his desk, brows dark and face an angry crimson. `Why do we always have problems like this when you have to work with any female member of a foreign service, 007? 1 won't have it. You know that already, so why do you constantly go out there and make fools of us?" From long experience Bond knew there was no point in trying to argue with his Chief. When the Old Man had the bit between his teeth, and truly believed that his accusations were founded on fact, all you could do was hang on and wait for the storm to pass.

The moment he entered M's office, on his return to London, he immediately knew there was trouble. The Chief was icy and terse as he made his verbal report, waiting to hear Bond's side of things before launching into an uncontrolled attack, which still continued after fifteen minutes.

`You appear to have lost a vital piece of evidence, which is reprehensible. You have also behaved in a manner prejudicial to both Queen's Regulations and the discipline of this service. I suspect the loss of the evidence is partly due to your misconduct, which was eventually reported to me via Scotland Yard, who were informed personally by the Swiss authorities." He stopped in mid-flow, turning to glower at Bond. `Well, 007?

Well, what have you to say for yourself?" `I admit to losing a document, sir. But, in my defence, that document was secure: locked in my briefcase which was inside one of the rooms in the suite I occupied with a member of the Swiss Intelligence and Security Service. There was no reason to think that anything would be stolen from a room that was locked and safeguarded.

`But it was stolen!" M's voice rose on the `was' and reached a high decibel level on `stolen'.

`I don't deny that, sir. I didn't know I'd have to sleep with the thing chained to my wrist. As far as we were concerned, Fraulein von Grusse and myself were the only people who even knew of the existence of the letter." `Oh, yes, Fraulein von Grusse! The pair of you are a disgrace. She'll be lucky if she's not actually dismissed from her service. But for your seniority, Bond, I'd have you permanently out of this building before nightfall. In these times, when various parliamentary idiots are calling for the disbandment of all intelligence services, we cannot afford flagrant moral lapses in the field.

He paused, shaking his head as if in disbelief.

`God knows, many people in power, both here and in the USA, seem to delight in telling the world that there is no further need for either security or intelligence operations. I even heard recently of some bestselling novelist doing a Chamberlain and sounding off about peace in our time. We all know that the so-called reformed Russians are still carrying out clandestine operations, and there's been a proliferation of new "active measures" by foreign intelligence services that the politicians let alone the general public have never even heard of. So, I cannot afford officers like yourself, who go out and live the life of Riley on government money.

`What are Fraulein von Grusse and myself accused of doing, sir?" `Of rutting like animals, Captain Bond. Of disturbing the peace of the Hotel VictoriaJungfrau, Interlaken, and of causing grave moral scandal." `On whose word, sir?" `On whose word? The hotel management's word, 007. They had no less than six complaints from guests. Heaven knows I have often turned a blind eye to your flagrantly immoral behaviour, but this time even I can't disregard it. It appears that you, with Fraulein von Grusse, made enough noise to waken the dead.

`What kind of noise, sir?" `The noise of brute beasts of the field. A retired couple called down to reception after midnight to complain of some kind of orgy going on in your suite. Within the hour there were five more complaints from people next door, and across the hallway from your suite. One elderly lady, it seems, was concerned lest murder was being done.

Screaming, laughter, shouts and-I can hardly bring myself to say it-the noise of furniture being abused. In plain language, the violent creaking of bed springs." `Really, sir?" Though he would be the first to admit that Fredericka and himself had enjoyed each other's company, it had been a very quiet business.

Endearments and whispers, rather than laughter and screams of delight. `And who, sir, reported all this to the police?" `The hotel reported it." `Yet they took no steps to pass on these so-called complaints directly to either myself or Fraulein von Grusse. Wouldn't you say that this is the normal kind of action in a properly run hotel?

If there are complaints concerning noise from a guest's room, then isn't it more usual for the hotel to inform the guest and ask him to keep quiet?" `That's as maybe. In this instance, the hotel reported it to the police-you know how the Swiss are. In turn, they checked on your names, realized why you were in Interlaken, and passed the comment back to Scotland Yard, who informed me.`I'd like to make a bet on which particular member of the hotel staff did this, sir." `That's not the crux of the matter. ..` `It is as far as I'm concerned, sir. I would like it on record that, during that particular night, absolutely no noise came from the suite occupied by Fraulein von Grusse and myself no screams, no laughter, no shouting, no abusing of furniture. I admit to spending the night in Fraulein von Grusse's company, but there was no blatant impropriety. Also, I would suggest that the person who made these accusations is a hotel employee, and assistant manager, I think.

Her name is Marietta Bruch." `Really, and can you give me any reason why this Marietta Bruch would lie about something as serious as this?" `I have absolutely no idea, sir. She was a shade put out when we couldn't complete the search of the late His March's room. Apart from that, she did seem slightly belligerent from the moment we arrived." `In what way?" `She made it pretty clear, by her manner, that she did not believe our cover story. I think if you can get the local Interlaken police to look into her story perhaps even interview the people who are supposed to have complained you will find it's Fraulein Bruch who's telling fairy tales.

M made an harrumphing sound, half clearing of throat, half dubious grunt.

`In fact, sir, I think I must insist that Fraulein Bruch's accusations are followed up, even if it means chasing former guests half\way around Europe. I repeat, sir, there was no noise from our suite." He looked at his Chief, locking eyes with him and, for an instant, could have sworn that deep behind M's glare were the traces of a slight twinkle.

`And what will you be doing while I follow this up if I follow it up?" `I am going to apply for a month's leave, sir. I'm going to get out of this building and not return until you, or whoever you appoint, have investigated this business thoroughly, and my name, together with that of Fraulein von Grusse, has been cleared of any meretricious impropriety." Again, he saw the small light in M's eyes. `A very good idea, Captain Bond. I would suggest that you go to your office, make your report in writing and then stay away from this facility until I recall you." `You're suspending me from duty, sir?" In the short pause that followed, Bond actually saw his Chief lift an eyebrow. `No, Captain Bond.

No, I'm not suspending you. I'm giving you leave to do exactly as you see fit. Go and write your report, then get out of my sight until everything is cleared up.

Bond rose and began to walk towards the door, halting and turning only when M spoke again. `Oh, Captain Bond, I suggest you also clean out your safe, and remove any sensitive papers from your desk. I shall let you know when you may return." This time, there was no mistaking the signals.

Though M still maintained his stiff, angry pose, he clearly winked.

`Very good, sir." Bond returned the wink. `I would like your permission regarding one matter.

`Yes?" `I would like to attend His March's funeral." `As far as I'm concerned you can do anything you like. Good day to you, Captain Bond." Another wink, this time broad and unconcealed.

It took less than an hour to write the report, which he sealed in an envelope and sent up to M by messenger. There was little of importance in the drawers of his desk, so he opened the small wall safe, provided for all senior officers. When he had left on the previous Saturday, the safe had been empty, but M's instructions, combined with the clandestine wink, had been specific.

Lying inside the safe were four slim buff folders, each flagged `restricted and classified'. A quick look inside the first file told him these were the up-to-date reports on the four assassinations that had taken place-in Rome, London, Paris and Washington during the previous week. There was no doubt in his mind that M was quietly ordering him to carry on investigating the situation.

Swiftly, he slid the folders into his briefcase, flicked the combination locks and left his office. At the main entrance he signed out, appending the words `on extended leave', and adding `Contact at private number'. He then strode out into a pleasantly warm and sunny London afternoon.

Within minutes, as he walked briskly across Regent's Park towards Clarence Gate and Baker Street, he knew there was surveillance on him.

Anybody who has spent a lifetime in the world of secrets, leading double existences, prowling those dark and maze-like alleys where truth is so often fiction, and reality becomes illusion, is bound to develop sensitive antennae: a sixth sense.

He could never have given anybody a logical explanation of how his antennae worked, but work they did. He knew he was being observed and probably followed, though there was no way he could immediately identify those who watched him.

On reaching Baker Street, he decided to sort out the sheep from the goats by giving them a run for their money. Hailing a passing taxi he told the driver to take him to Austin Reed s in Regent Street. As the driver pulled out into the traffic, Bond glanced back, just catching sight of a young man in jeans and a black shirt desperately trying to flag down another cab.

Austin Reed's store occupies almost an entire block on the west side of Regent Street, a few blocks from Piccadilly Circus. As the cab pulled up, so Bond slipped the driver a five pound note and was on to the pavement almost before the vehicle had come to a stop. He had no intention of going into the store. Instead, he walked quickly towards what Londoners usually refer to as `The Dilly', and disappeared down the steps to the London Transport Underground system.

He took a train to South Kensington where he intended to change on to the Circle Line, to take a train back to Sloane Square which would bring him within walking distance of his flat in the pleasant Regency house which stands on a quiet tree-lined street off the King's Road.

As he negotiated the pedestrian tunnels at South Kensington he realized that the young man he had seen in Baker Street was not only still with him but he had also manoeuvred himself into a position some twenty feet in front of him, anticipating Bond's destination. The young man was a professional and Bond knew where there is one experienced watcher then two or three others are usually near at hand.

The adrenalin began to pump, and his nerve ends tingled. The very fact of being followed created a tension of its own, and he felt his muscles involuntarily tighten. He had no idea where this team came from. For all he knew, they could be part of some foreign service, or more likely, he considered-part of the famed Watcher Service of MIS.

The platform was crowded even though the usual rush hour would not get under way for another hour or so. The man in jeans and black shirt lounged against the slick, tiled wall, near a poster proclaiming `Cats.

Now and For Ever.

Bond placed himself directly in front of the watcher, giving the young man a good view of his back, waiting for the next train to rumble from the tunnel. It pulled up with a hiss of automatic doors opening, and there was a surge forward as people tried to board the carriages while others eased their way out.

He stayed back, as if he had changed his mind about getting on the train. Then, he turned, took a pace forward and asked the young man if he had the time. The watcher lazily raised his left arm to look at his watch and Bond gave him a quick, hard jab to the chin with the heel of his right hand.

The watcher's head snapped back, his eyes taking on, a glazed look of surprise.

`There s a man in trouble here,' Bond shouted in the general direction of a uniformed official, before he lunged for the closing doors of the nearest carriage. As the train pulled out, he saw a small knot of people form around the crumpled watcher.

* * * The street off King's Road where Bond lived was a cul-de-sac, the preferred kind of location for anyone in his profession. `You either live out in the open, with a lot of flat ground between you and the rest of the world, or you choose a street with only one entrance or exit,' one of the instructors had told him years ago. `Preferably, a short street,' the old expert had added.

He knew all his neighbours, and their cars, by sight, and could spot a strange car or person in a second. Now, as he finally turned the corner and entered his street, Bond realized that, whoever they were, this surveillance team was serious. He saw not only a very strange vehicle a small closed van but also a uniformed road sweeper, with his high wheeled cart, who was making his rounds, working as Bond's old housekeeper would have said `as though dead lice were dropping off him'.

The road sweeper was a total stranger, and not the man Bond was used to seeing.

He showed no sign of having noticed anything out of the ordinary as he put his key in the latch and entered the house through the front door. A pile of mail lay on the mat.

His housekeeper, May, was up in Scotland with her nephew and his wife, so Bond had taken his usual extra precautions slivers of wood in the doorjamb, invisible thread across windows, just in case anyone had tried to bypass his sophisticated alarm system. Everything was in place, but that did not mean a thing. If he was truly the target of a tight surveillance operation, there could be a tap on his telephone without anyone gaining entrance to the house.

He dumped the mail on his sitting-room table, went to the ornate Empire desk and unlocked one of the larger drawers and removed what appeared to be a normal telephone. Unplugging his house phone from its modular jack, he replaced it with the equipment taken from the desk drawer. He did not trust pocket tap detectors, and certainly could not call in the delousing department from headquarters. The telephone now in use was a state-of-the-art piece of equipment, a very distant cousin of what used to be called the Neutralizer phone. With this instrument in place, even the best wire tap was defenceless. The micro circuits within the telephone automatically sent out signals which could not be captured on tape or headphones.

Instead, a would-be eavesdropper would be treated to a high-pitched signal known to cause severe deafness for a minimum of forty-eight hours one of the reasons the service instructions forbade the use of these devices on a permanent basis. The other consideration was cost, for each unit of the Electronic Countermeasures Telephone (ECMT) or `Squealerphone', as it was often called, ran to almost œ4,000.

Having dealt with communications, he took the briefcase into his small bedroom, felt along the gleaming white painted wainscot until he found a tiny knot of wood which he pulled back to reveal a large, secret fireproof steel safe. Quickly working the combination, he slid the briefcase inside then locked everything and slid the panel back into place.

Having dealt with the important matter, Bond now turned his attention to the day's mail: ironically enough there was a telephone bill, as well as a red electricity account, meaning that it was time to pay up or lose power, four pieces of junk mail, and a letter in a dark blue envelope, addressed correctly in a bold hand female, he thought which he did not recognize.

The envelope contained one sheet of notepaper, in the same shade of blue. The sheet contained neither address nor salutation. In the same, round, very feminine hand was a five-line message: `You should be warned that the Security Service has permanent, round-the-clock surveillance on you, it read. `We have met once, but I should not give you my name in writing. I shall take tea at Brown's Hotel each afternoon this week between four and six. Please throw the watchers and meet me. This is a matter of great urgency and importance, which concerns the late Laura March.

There was just enough in the short note to rouse his interest.

The trick would be throwing the surveillance team. In novels of espionage a hero might disguise himself suitably and hoodwink the Tharp-eyed team of watchers. He thought of Buchan s The Thirty-nine Steps, where Richard Hannay had left the police standing as he exited a building disguised as a milkman. It was almost five in the afternoon, Brown's Hotel lay a good twenty minutes away, by taxi, in Dover Street, close to Piccadilly and Bond Street. If he was going to slip the leash and make contact today, he would have to be very light on his feet.

At least he now knew who he was up against, and that was not the happiest of thoughts, for the Watcher Branch of the Security Service is one of the best-trained surveillance outfits in the world.

Softly he quoted Shakespeare to himself: "`Oh, for a muse of fire He stopped, wrinkling his brow, and then smiled to himself. That had done it, the Muse of Fire.

Smoke and mirrors, he thought, as he went rapidly into the kitchen.

May, his housekeeper, was old-fashioned and regarded any utensil made from plastic with the same disdain as a conscientious watchmaker might regard the electronic workings of digital timepieces. Instead of the ubiquitous plastic, foot-operated rubbish containers, she insisted on using an old and heavy Victorian all-metal rubbish bin. The plastic variety, she always claimed, were fire hazards and that was exactly what he needed now a safe, well-contained fire hazard.

On the previous Saturday, when he had been unexpectedly called into the office, Bond was left with little time to complete any of the household chores usually undertaken by the absent May, so the rubbish bin was still almost a quarter full. It contained damp paper towels, the somewhat pungent remains of the curry he had cooked for himself on the Friday night, together with coffee grounds, egg shells and some discarded toast from his breakfast on the Saturday morning. To this now unpleasant stew he added a pile of bundled-up paper towels, tamping them around the garbage and crumpling more which he threw on top of the moist mess until the bin was around three-quarters full.

Dragging the bin into the small lobby, he placed it in the open doorway between there and the sitting-room. Then he went quickly through to his bedroom.

When the old house had been renovated, a skilful architect had made certain that each of its three storeys was entirely self-contained. The only entrance to Bond's apartment was through the front door, and to all intents his rooms occupied the entire ground floor. In reality his apartment, like each of the flats above him, lost some eight feet along the right-hand gable end of the house, where a false wall had been put in to accommodate private entrances, each with its own self-contained flight of stairs, for the two higher apartments.

These alterations had in no way affected the original view from Bond's bedroom, where the gold Cole wallpaper contrasted elegantly with deep-red velvet curtains. The bedroom windows looked out on to a tiny garden, with a red brick wall surrounding the lawn and flowerbeds behind the house. The three sections of the wall formed simple divisions between the gardens of the houses on either side, and, at the end, the garden of the property at the rear. It was this far wall that interested him. The view from his windows included the back of the slightly larger Regency house which stood in another cul-de-sac running roughly parallel to the one in which Bond lived.

There was a drop of some eight feet from the bedroom windows, and the wall that separated the neighbouring garden was around twelve feet high, with no barbs, broken glass or other deterrents to a would-be climber. This house was owned by a merchant banker and his family who, to his certain knowledge, had left for their annual summer holiday in Cyprus on the previous Saturday. Bond liked to keep track of all his neighbours. It was something he did automatically when in London, and, over the years, his personal watch was one of second nature. He also knew that the house had a side entrance giving access from the garden along the gable end to a gravelled turning circle and the street.

He opened one of the long sash windows in the bedroom, then went back to the rubbish bin. Even a careftil team of watchers were unlikely to have any spare people loitering in the parallel street, anywhere near the merchant banker's home, and he considered that, should the ruse in mind work, he could get from his bedroom window, across the wall and out into the street through the garden door in a maximum of one and a half minutes. It would be a race, for the watchers would certainly react very quickly, but he considered the odds were just in his favour.

Squeezing past the rubbish bin, he opened a drawer in the ornate clothes stand, which stood against one wall of the entrance lobby, and took out a pair of black leather driving gloves. Thirty seconds later, Bond set light to the paper towels in the bin.

Initially, the metal container blazed alarmingly with flame. Then the fire tried to claw its way into the damp garbage, the flames died and dense white smoke began to billow from the container. Within thirty seconds the smoke began to fill the lobby, and Bond hesitated, wondering how much the smoke damage would cost him in refurbishing, then he stepped back heading for the kitchen to activate the alarm system which would shriek into action almost immediately because of the open window in his bedroom. A second before the bells went off, the smoke detectors triggered their separate shrill siren, and he made his way to the bedroom with ears humming from the din.

There would not be much time, for the watchers in the van, plus the phony road sweeper would almost certainly make for the front of the house, intent on breaking down the door. This would be flushing-out with a vengeance, for the team s instinctive reaction would be to assist in what should appear to be a true emergency, and to blazes with their cover. Once they broke down the door, the source of the predicament would be all too apparent, and by then Bond would have to be long gone.

He dropped from the window and hit the ground running, taking a flying leap at the brick wall, his gloved hand rocketing up as he reached the apogee of his jump, scrabbling to get a firm grip on the topmost bricks of the wall. His hands took hold, his body hitting the wall, chest first, knocking the wind out of him so that, for a second, he almost lost his grasp. Then, with one muscle-wrenching haul, he lifted himself over the wall and dropped into a carefully tended flowerbed on the far side.

Not looking back to see what damage he might have caused to the banker's hardy annuals, he plunged across the manicured lawn, running for the large wooden gate that would take him along the side of the house and into the street.

The gate was firmly bolted and locked, and he lost precious seconds in slipping the bolts and smashing the lock with three mighty kicks. Finally, some two minutes after dropping from the bedroom window, he emerged into the street, brushing himself off with one hand, and struggling to get control of his breathing.

In the distance he could hear the fire engines, and he thought he could detect the frantic shouts of the watchers. Smiling to himself, Bond reached the King's Road and hailed the first available taxi.

`Looks like a drama somewhere around here, guy'nor,' the cabbie observed.

`It's quite near my place, I'm afraid." Bond was still flicking brick dust from his navy blue blazer.

`I'll know soon enough. Brown's Hotel please, and I'm in a bit of a hurry." `You'll be lucky this time of day, guy'nor, but I'll do me best.

* It was exactly ten minutes to six when they pulled up in front of the hotel's unpretentious entrance, for Brown s still does its best to be a home-from-home to the gentry even though a large slice of its current clientele now comes from Britain's former major colony. Yet that was also in its tradition, for Teddy Roosevelt was married from the hotel, and FDR and his new wife, Eleanor, spent part of their honeymoon there. Mr Brown himself, originally butler to Lord Byron, would probably still smile down on his creation.

He headed straight for the comfortable, panelled lounge to the right of the foyer, where afternoon tea was served in a truly traditional manner. There were only half a dozen people still in the room, and a waiter came up to quietly tell him that they had finished serving tea.

`It's all right, I'm supposed to meet someone ...

His voice trailed off for he saw her raise a hand and smile at him. She was sitting in a corner, near the fireplace decorated with flowers now in summer where she had a total controlled view of the room, and as he moved closer, he still could not place her.

She wore an elegant black business suit and the short skirt rode up high, showing an almost erotic amount of thigh. When he had last seen her, she had her black hair pulled severely back from her forehead and fastened in a bun at the nape of her neck. Now the smooth and glossy hair fell down to her shoulders and curled provocatively. The granny glasses had gone and he presumed she was wearing contact lenses, for the deep brown eyes looked up at him, wide and delighted, with just a hint of anxiety.

`Captain Bond, I'm so glad you could make it. I hope you didn't bring anybody with you." The voice was husky and distinctive.

`Please call me James, His Chantry. This is quite a surprise. You look different." The last time he had seen her was in M's office with her superior officer from MIS, the fussy Mr Grant.

`Then you should call me Carmel-a strange name for a good British girl, I know." She smiled and the entire room seemed to brighten. `You did manage to slip our little phantom friends, I hope.

He smiled and sat next to her, his nostrils noting the subtle trace of a very expensive scent. `They were dealing with a fire in my flat when I left." `Good. Might I suggest we go somewhere a little more private. I have a great deal to tell you, and I really don't think I'm going to have all that much time. I fear my immediate boss, the preposterous Gerald Grant, will be out looking for me, and I think his message will be that I've overstepped the mark once too often.

Would your service have a job for a former member of the Security Service?" `It depends what kind of service she's offering?" `Well,' she paused, letting a wicked smile play around her lips. `Well, James, to begin with I have some nasty stories about the way my people cocked up the vetting of Laura March..." `I know about the brother." `Indeed.

Well, for one reason or another, there are secrets deeper than the maniac brother." `Such as?" `Such as her last lover the fiance' and the broken engagemen. How would that be for starters?" `Give me a name, just to humour me, Carmel." `David?" She smiled, her fingers brushing the back of his hand. `David Dragonpol.

`As in the greatest British actor since Olivier?" He heard the shocked surprise in his voice.

`The same." `Where can we go and talk?" `I'm on leave." Again the smile which was a mixture of wanton invitation and secret amusement.

`I've taken a room here for the week, on the premise that little Gerald won't look for me in London.

`You really mean the David Dragonpol?" `The actor, no less. Shall we go?" She rose and he waited for her to lead the way. As he followed her out to the elevators, Bond had one of those strange flashes of intuition which told him that this way lay monsters.

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE MAN WITH THE GLASS HEAD

The name, David Dragonpol, slewed around Bond's mind as they rode the elevator up to the third floor. In that short space of time, he went through all he could remember concerning the great actor who was, in himself, an enigma.

The world had become aware of Dragonpol in the late 1970s when he had appeared, first, in a television dramatization of the life of Richard Wagner, then, later in the year, in a National Theatre production of Hamlet. It was his first leading role on stage, and he had only left the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in the spring.

What followed was theatrical fairytale history.

Dragonpol had a stunning stage presence, was tall, fine looking, and with that extraordinary talent of a truly great actor-the ability to change both voice and appearance almost at will. After his huge success as the Prince of Denmark he directed and played in Richard III and The Merchant of Venice.

Both productions had taken not just London, but the world, by storm and Hollywood came calling with offers he could not refuse.

He did five films before returning to the stage, and by the early 1980s, David Dragonpol was hailed as one of the greatest living British actors, second only to Olivier.

During the film period, one reviewer had commented that he was .... as impressive in his pauses as he is when speaking the lines of a character. He has that unique gift, known to only a handful of film actors, which allows the audience to see into his head, as though you can view his brain and mind. It is as if he is a man with a glass head." The jealous few derisively called him the Man with the Glass Head.

On stage he played just about every classic role, from the comic Lord Foppington in the bawdy Restoration comedy The Relapse, or Virtue in Danger, to Firs, in Chekhov's The Cheny Orchard, and on to Lear. He also created new characters like Justin Marlowe, the seedy confidence trickster in a first play Graft by unknown author Jack Russell; and the Mystic in a clever reworking of the general plot of Shakespeare's The Tempest. He was a household name, and within a decade enhanced the art of acting.

Then, as suddenly as he had appeared, Dragonpol whose ancestry could be traced back to the Domesday Book retired from both stage and screen in 1990, for what were described as `personal and private reasons Rumours spread: that he had Aids; that he had been the victim of a nervous breakdown which had destroyed both his talent and confidence; that some unknown tragedy had struck within his family he had always kept his private life strictly to himself, and even the most skilful and unprincipled journalists had failed to break into his privacy. They tried to track him down, but David Dragonpol eluded Press and the other media, disappearing as though he had never been.

Bond had seen him on stage and film, then once in the flesh, dining at Fouquet's in Paris with the British director Trevor Nunn, and swore he could feel the creative static right across the busy restaurant.

As they reached Carmel Chantry's door, he felt a strange sense of de Ja vu, as though the David Dragonpol of that time was very near at hand.

The room was on the small side, though pleasant enough and well furnished. Carmel slipped out of her suit jacket, to reveal a white silk shirt which showed off her slim waist and clung tightly to neat, firm breasts. She dropped on to the bed, propping herself against the padded headboard, indicating that Bond should take the one easy chair.

`Okay, what about Laura March and David Dragonpol?" He tried to look elsewhere as her skirt rode higher up her thighs.

`Oh, James." She gave a little throaty laugh, and arched her body.

`You mean I have lured you into my web and you still want to talk business?" He looked up and saw that her lips and eyes were almost mocking him, one eyebrow raised quizzically. `It's all right,' she smiled. `I did lure you here to talk business, but I get so few opportunities to p,lay the femme fatale that the role carries me away.

`Then why the disguise?" `Which disguise?" `I'm not sure. Either the disguise you wore when you came to see my Chief, or the one you're wearing now?" She shifted on the bed. `Actually, this is the real me." `Then why the frumpish outfit, the granny glasses and severe hairdo when you came calling?" `Gerald,' she sighed.

`Grant?" `Master of the Anti-terrorist Section, lord of all he surveys. Gerald Grant is the complete paranoid.

Because of his paranoia he sees the Red Brigade lurking behind every door, the Provisional IRA in every shadow, the PLO and the Grey Wolves with moles inside the section itself. He demands that his officers practise tradecraft twenty-four hours a day, and use disguises when out on the town. To be honest with you, James, I've had fat Gerald up to here." She raised one hand above her head and the silk of her shirt tightened against her breast. `I told you that I was on leave. That's true, but I've also handed in my resignation. Gerald is more dangerous than a busload of terrorists.

`Because of his paranoia?" `That, plus his incompetence.

`He put the watchers on to me?" `Of course. He holds executive rank, which gives him more power than he should rightly have.

- `Why the watchers?" `He instructed them from the word go. They were with you in Switzerland, though he had no right to use them. When you came back in disgrace, I understand he put an entire team on to you. Said it was an exercise. Bamboozled the head of the Watcher Section. Told him it would be good practice for the lads and lasses." She paused, then shot him a quick and interested smile. `Did you really come back in disgrace? Gerald said you'd been pretty naughty with a lady from Swiss Intelligence.

`Naughty enough to be on leave pending an inquiry." `Oh, James.

You really should control yourself.

You can when you try. Look at you now." She moved suggestively and another couple of inches of thigh were revealed.

`Okay, so he put the watchers on me. Why?" `I think you know why.

It's the reason that fat Gerald will get the push. His concern was that you'd find out exactly what you did find out." `Which was?" `Don't be coy James. You found out one of Laura's secrets.

`Her brother?" `Of course.

`Tell me more. `When Laura March joined the Anti-terrorist Section, it was Gerald who did the positive vetting.

He screwed up-mightily.

`And he realized he had screwed up?" `About a year ago, yes.

Well, in fact, I discovered Laura's secret-the serial killer brother." `How?" `By accident. I was doing some checking on a possible terrorist contact in the North. It meant looking through local newspapers from way back. I stumbled on the David March story. Though it was headlines all over the world, and people have written books about it, the March family somehow managed to distance themselves. They even kept their photographs out of the papers the national papers, that is.

I happened to see a picture of the father with his daughter in a local paper. She was only a schoolgirl, but I had no doubt it was her.

`So you came running to Gerald.

`No. No, I didn't. Laura was super. She was very good at her job, likeable, funny, very professional.

She was my friend, so I went running to her." `So who broke the bad news to Gerald?" `She did. You can imagine how she felt. She had buried the past. Done everything to live it down.

She had been terrified with the first vetting, let alone the one Gerald did. She knew she'd be out on her ear if anyone linked her with the David March business. One psycho nut in the family puts a terrible blot on the old escutcheon. Nobody in our service would risk employing her tainted blood and all that kind of thing. The possibility of blackmail was worse than the old days when they wouldn't use gay people. Thank heavens that's changed." Again she shifted on the bed, and, for the first time, Bond got her message.

`No,' she continued. `Laura went straight to Gerald and made her confession. He was appalled, of course, though tried to pass it off.

Said he had known all along, but felt she was so good that he had buried the evidence. `She really was that good?" `Laura? Yes, she was stunningly professional. A walking encyclopaedia on all known terrorist operations, and personalities. To be honest with you, Gerald would have been lost without her, she was so good." `And now he is lost?" `Just about. He covered up for her. He even kept quiet about David Dragonpol. You saw that yourself. He refused to discuss her private life with your Chief." `I still don't see why he put the dogs on me. She gave a little mocking laugh. `I think he really imagined that he might still get away with it I mean hide the little difficulty about her brother and the bloodline, and also keep the Dragonpol thing under wraps. He knew you were good. Has a file on you. Really he wanted someone more inexperienced on the case. He set you up, James, but you must know that.

`No. How did he set me up?" `He uses someone at that hotel in Interlaken has been using her for some time. `Marietta Bruch?" `The same. Laura spent odd weeks there with David. In fact, he made sure he had someone near her whenever she had any kind of tryst with D. D as she used to call him. When the engagement was broken off, he seemed very relieved." He nodded. `So tell me about Laura and the great man.

The man with the glass head, as some people used to call him.

`He didn't like that, by the way. There's really nothing much to tell. Gerald was concerned that, should the marriage take place, the Press would focus on her, turn up her past, and he'd be given the old heave-ho. Which is probably what would have happened, and what will happen." `There really was an engagement?" `Oh, Lord, yes. Laura was nuts about him and he about her. They met by accident, in 1989.

Switzerland, as it happened. Lucerne, I think.

Laura didn't even know who he was. David Dragonpol is a great chameleon, you know. Can hide in plain sight, even though his face and name are of the household variety. They met while she was doing a bit of unauthorized snooping for Gerald. The affair began within a couple of days..' `She was like that?" `Like what?" `Permissive? Got into affairs quickly?" `Far from it. Laura was poised, elegant, even beautiful, and very sexy. I tried, but she's not one of the sisterhood." Her hand went to her mouth.

`Damn!" `Don't worry. I had you marked a few minutes ago. Just tell me about Laura and Dragonpol." `Actually, you might not have me marked. If you want the truth, I'm like the Circle Line. I go both ways. You'd be surprised how many people are bisexual.

`Ah. No, I wouldn't be surprised. Nothing surprises me any more and, like they say, some of my best friends, and all that." He wanted her to get to the real meat, and not spill her own problems or proclivities to him. `Laura and Dragonpol,' he said firmly.

`I told you. They met early in 1990, and the whole thing took off. She came back into the office like a loony tune. You could almost see the bluebirds flying around her head, tweeting like they do in cartoons. And she put on that goofy, faraway look that people get when they're first smitten.

`And she spilled the beans to you?" `I forced it out of her, but yes, she talked to me.

We had dinner together one night and she told all as the girls' magazines say. It was better for me to hear it before anyone else." `But others did hear it." `Of course. In the Security Service you don't keep that kind of thing quiet for very long. Every spare weekend she had, Laura spent with David.

When the dogs are out, they soon put two and two together. In a matter of weeks she made no secret about it within the office. I don't think it went further than that. Our people, like yours, are pretty tight-lipped, but I do know that she had girls from the secretariat asking her what he was really like.

The usual kind of thing." `And where did he meet her?" `They took holidays together, sometimes in Interlaken, which they both thought was safe...

`No, you said she saw him on every spare weekend she had.

`Oh, that. She'd fly out to his place.

`His place?" `Sure." `The Press, and a lot of other people, have been trying to find out where his place is, ever since he went to ground." `He's never made a genuine secret of it. He has a kind of fairytale life. Lives in a castle on the Rhine.

Very Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm." `Where exactly?" `Right on the Rhine. Not far from Andernach.

I've seen photographs of the place-great thick walls, turrets, a huge enclosed garden, moat, the lot. It's even called Schloss Drache that's German for Dragon. Been in the family for centuries apparently.

He lives there with his younger widowed sister. She's quite a handful, I gather. Name of Horton. Maeve Horton, nee Dragonpol. You do know his family history, don't you?" `Only that his publicity used to claim the Dragonpols are mentioned in the Doomsday Book." `Certainly are. There's a manor house in Cornwall Dragonpol Manor, would you believe?

Yet they really think of themselves as Anglo-Irish.

A Dragonpol went to Ireland with the Earl of Essex to put down the rebellion in the late sixteenth century. The Irish problem's plagued every British monarch since Elizabeth I to the present day. Odd, isn't it?" He nodded her on.

`The Elizabethan Dragonpol set himself up in a huge manor in West Cork. They actually became very respected the Dragonpols of Drimoleague.

Still have a place there. The Irish connection sent Gerald through the roof. He had agents trawling the area-illegally, of course looking into the family background for weeks after Laura announced the engagement `Which was when?" `Oh, about six weeks after they first met.

`And it was broken off?" `Yes." `When?" `Two weeks ago. She had planned to go out to Schloss Drache for her leave in August. She actually told me they would be getting married in August. Apparently it was all arranged. Then, a couple of weeks ago she came into my office looking ill white, unsteady. It was a Friday afternoon and she said D. D. had called her. There was some drama and he was sending his private aircraft for her. On the Monday she came in and told me it was all over.

`She was in a state? Emotional?" `Yes. Very unhappy, but she gave the impression that the reason for the break-up was valid. She actually said to me, "It's quite out of the question.

We can't marry. I just wish he'd told me ~~~~ `Told her what?" `I don't know. She said that she'd talk about it when she came back from her leave. Booked the Interlaken hotel at the last minute.

Said she didn't know if it was a good idea, because they'd been very happy there, but it would give her some kind of perspective.

`So she was never able to discuss the reason with you?" She shook her head, biting her lip, plainly upset.

When he looked at her again, Bond saw tears hovering in her eyes.

`She loved him so much James. It really was one of those great romances.

`Yet she took the break-up --- how can I say it?

Stoically?" `She said she understood, and that it was quite impossible. I mean, when she came into my office on the Friday, she looked sick-very sick with concern. When she came in on the Monday, she was together. It was as if she had been able to accept the break-up and knew the marriage would never have worked." `That's it?" `That's all I know.

There was a long pause. Somewhere far away, down the corridor, somebody slammed a door.

`So, you're going to stay hidden away until your leave is up?" `Something like that. Gerald won't be too happy. He'll have lost his two most precious assets, and I know where a lot of the bodies are buried.

He won't let me go easily." `You think you're in any kind of danger?" She shook her head, then laughed. `Gerald's a pompous idiot, but he's not that stupid. No, I don't think I'm in any physical danger." `What about Laura? Did you ever think she was in physical danger?" `It's something we don't really think about.

Anyone in the Anti-terrorist Section could be in danger." `But she knew things, knew of people...

`More than most. There was a period when she was working on the hostages business with the Americans. Trying to find out where people like Terry Waite were being kept. She was good, James, so certainly some of the terrorist organizations would know of her, though they might only know her as a cipher-a code name.

She was very careful. I told you: a real pro.

`So, if you were asked under oath, you would have to say that there was always a possibility?" `Of course. The same possibility that we all face.

No more, no less. There was no particular outfit that she was afraid of. That's all." Bond grunted, and slowly got to his feet.

`Do you have to go?" There was a hint of begging in her voice, and her eyes had a pleading look. `I'm very much alone. I mean I could do with some company." `I'm sorry. I must go. You've given me information that I have to follow up." `Not even a "thank you" cuddle?" He shook his head, reached out and gave her shoulder a comforting caress. `Maybe some other time, Carmel.

`That would be really nice.

Outside in the street, the day had turned into evening. Warm, with that wonderful pearly summer sky that you get over London on good August nights.

Back at the Regency house, off the King's Road, he found a police car, and a pair of uniformed officers waiting patiently. They told him there had been a fire. `Nothing serious, sir, but it looks like arson, and a break-in.

It was obvious that the cops had not been taken into the confidence of the Security Service. The lock had been mended, and the small entrance lobby was black with soot from the fire. The offending rubbish bin had been dusted for prints, and removed into the garden.

The bedroom window had been broken somehow.

He thanked the police and called a twenty-four-hour glazier who turned up at around eight-thirty. He had just finished with the window when the telephone rang for the first time. It was the red phone, his private and secure line with the office.

`Get anything interesting at Brown's?" M asked quietly.

`Quite a lot, sir. I'm following it up.

`Don't call me." M sounded like a theatrical agent after an audition. `I'll contact you." `Right, sir. I hope you've taken our sister service apart." `It's being dealt with. I'll be in touch." The house phone rang as he was about to go out and get some dinner at a nearby favourite restaurant. He answered warily.

`James, it's me." Fredericka's voice was husky.

`Where are you?" `I've booked into the Inn on the Park. I said my husband would be joining me.

`And is he?" `I certainly hope you are. I'm registered as Mrs Van Warren." `As in rabbit?" `The same." `Right. Mr Van Warren will be with you in half an hour." `Goodie. I have a tale to tell, James.

`Join the club." `I can hardly wait." He cradled the receiver and muttered, `The things I do for England." Ten minutes later he stepped from the house carrying a small overnight case. It was almost ten o'clock, which meant that he missed the television news, and so knew nothing about the young woman found murdered, stabbed to death, in a third-floor room at the exclusive Brown's Hotel. Nor did he hear or see the slightly inaccurate description of himself which had been put out by the police as the last man to be seen with her.

CHAPTER EIGHT

THIS IS HOW IT MUST END

`James, it's you, look at it!" Fredericka stood in the doorway of the bedroom holding the Daily Telegraph which had been delivered with breakfast.

She lifted the front page so that it faced Bond, who was lying back against the pillows. There were banner headlines: BEAUTY STABBED iN LONDON HOTEL. Below, the subheading read, Man sought by police.

Side by side were two photographs, one of a somewhat elaborate brunette next to a composite picture, produced by a photofit computer programme.

The composite bore more than a passing resemblance to James Bond.

*

*

*

On the previous night, Bond had found himself expected at the Inn on the Park. She had booked a suite which looked out across Hyde Park, not that he wanted to even glance at Hyde Park from the windows, for she met him at the door, a towelling robe loosely knotted at the waist, the knot parting as she stepped back to reveal that she was wearing the bare minimum underneath, with the accent on bare.

They finished saying hello about two hours later, after which he called room service and they sat across a small table eating smoked salmon and a huge chef's salad while he told her how things stood.

`The letter was certainly to David,' he swallowed, `but not to dear departed brother David. I suspect she never intended to send that letter. I believe it was a kind of private therapy.

Sometimes people deal with emotions by writing letters to a loved one now out of reach. I'd bet money that's what Laura March was doing.

`And the loved one was?" He told her. Inevitably her jaw dropped and she asked the familiar question, `Not the David Dragonpol?" `In the flesh." `Ah." She gave him a sloe-eyed, knowing look.

`We know of the famous Mr Dragonpol.

`Everyone knows of the famous Mr Dragonpol.

`I mean the royal "we", as in my service knows of David Dragonpol." `Really? Interesting?" `I use the term "my service" loosely. I honestly don't know if I'm still a member of it. Like you, I'm on leave pending a Court of Inquiry. But, yes, I've seen the name come across various desks from time to time. He travels a lot.

`My information is that he stays holed up in a castle on the Rhine." She nodded. `Schloss Drache, sure. He comes in via Germany, but he's been in and out like a jack rabbit you should pardon the simile over the last couple of years. A day here, two days there, a change of plans. Busy man, David Dragonpol what a crazy name, Dragonpol." She ran it over her neat little pink tongue, then tried it again.

`Dragonpol." Then, once more with feeling, `Draaagooonpool.

Weird." `It means Dragon Head." `I know what it means, James. It's just a weird name. He should have changed it to Beastiehead, or something more conventional. Where did you come by all this information anyway-about Laura and the demon Dragonpol?" `First, what do your people think the great man's up to, travelling around Switzerland?" `Nobody's sure. He's only been casually questioned, and always has a ready answer: says he is hunting for pieces to go in his castle which he is turning into a huge theatre museum.

`A theatre museum?" `He plans to open it to the public in due course: a kind of Disneyland, but dedicated to the history and art of theatre through the ages. That's what he says he's doing. Mind you, he likes disguises, but then he's an actor, so he would like disguises.

`Yet your service still knew of his comings and goings?" `Usually, yes. He's also very good at slipping surveillance, but there were some leads little things-I recall." `Such as?" `Such as a possible meeting with an arms dealer here, or a special source there: the odd informer; some people on the fringes of international terrorism. Nothing was ever proved, but there is definitely something sniffy about the actor.

`Iffy,' Bond corrected.

`No, sniffy, like in smelly.

`If your people had an eye on him, what about the British Security Service?" `I wouldn't know about that.

`You share information though.

`Only when it's absolutely necessary. Dragonpol very rarely went to England. We Swiss like to keep certain secrets." `Then you Swiss should have known about him and Laura.

She shrugged. `Maybe we did. I don't see everything." `Well, he was definitely engaged to the fair Laura, and the engagement was broken off a couple of weeks before she went up the mountain and didn't come down again." She looked at him as though not entirely satisfied; as a woman who has smelled a different scent on his shirt, or spotted a lipstick mark on a collar: a shade of lipstick she never uses. `So, where did you come by all this information?" He told her about the skirmish with the Security Service's watchers, and his meeting with the lovely Carmel Chantry.

`And this Chantry person told all?" `Everything. Including how we were set up by the unlovely Fraulein Bruch.

`Mmmm." She again cocked a quizzical eye at him. `She tell you this standing, sitting, or flat on her back, James?" `I was sitting, she was lying on a bed in Brown's Hotel.`Before she told you, were you also lying on the bed?" `No, Fredericka. It was all very proper." `What we've been doing is also very proper.

`More than very proper. She also told me that she once made a pass at Laura.

`Doesn't mean a thing particularly if she's fragile and feminine.

`She volunteered the information.

`Lying on a bed?" `Yes." `Huh!" Fredericka von Grusse narrowed her eyes.

`I remained seated throughout." `Long may it stay that way. You think the wicked witch of the Victoria-Jungfrau will get us off the hook if I alert large muscular members of my service to go and talk with her?" `Shouldn't be surprised. You might even provoke some kind of international incident.

`Good." She sounded quite ready to start a global incident.

`Good, I'll telephone them in the morning. I still have a few favours I can call in.

Anyway, someone's going to be in touch with me; give me the inquest verdict and find out when Laura's going to be buried-and where." She took another mouth full of salmon. `What was it the old Inquisition used to call an interrogation? Putting someone on the question." `To,' Bond smiled. `They put people "to the question `Good again. In a few minutes I shall put you to the question, James. But I shall do it lying down, and the torture will be exquisite.

`You could take a man to an early grave, Fredericka." `No, but I'll soon tell if his stamina has gone down the tubes. Find out if he is telling the truth about this little heart-to-heart, earlier this evening, with His Chantry." `I look forward to it * Now, on the morning after a strenuous night before, she stood in the doorway, one foot tapping and the other pointing to the picture of the elaborate brunette. `Is this the trollop, Carmel Chantry?" `No,' Bond said, shifting his body and reaching up, as though to take the paper. `No, that's not her, but there is a likeness ... I wonder...?" He reached for the telephone and dialled Brown's Hotel, asking for room 349.

A few seconds later the operator came back and asked who he actually wanted to speak with.

`Three-forty-nine. His Chantry." `His Chantry checked out yesterday evening, sir." `Thank you." He cradled the telephone, and looked up at Fredericka again. `Does the paper give a name?" `Of the murder victim?

Yes, she was staying in the hotel under the name Barnabus. Heather Barnabus. Shall I read it to you?" `No, let me see." He all but snatched the Telegraph from her, quickly scanning the story.

The girl had arrived at the hotel during the previous afternoon, had registered under the name Heather Barnabus, and, it was reported, she had been seen talking to a man in the lounge just after they had stopped serving tea around six o'clock. A chambermaid had found her body at seven-thirty when she went to make up the room for the night.

According to the story, she had died from multiple stab wounds.

Then came the description that, at a pinch, would pass for Bond. The police, as ever, wished to interview this man in order to eliminate him from their enquiries.

`This girl is definitely not Carmel." He tapped the picture again.

`Though there is a passing resemblance. It's possible that someone saw me with Carmel before we went up to her room." `A passing resemblance? Really? So this Carmel looks a bit of a tart, yes?" `Not at all. She's been put in a very difficult position..

`Many times I should imagine `By her imbecilic superior who appears to be about as professional as a veterinary surgeon in an abattoir. -Ăš `If this one is like the Chantry person, she looks pretty ,professional to me..

`She s an experienced security officer, Fredericka!" He raised his voice, just enough to put paid to the bitchy remarks.

`Don't you think you should do something about it? I mean, somebody's going to connect you with that photofit, and they'll haul you off to the pokey before you can say cipher.

`I'd feel happier if I knew where Carmel had got to." `Oh, damn Carmel.

`No, Fredericka. She has serious problems, as does the Security Service. The idiot officer who's head of their Anti-terrorist Section is about as efficient as a wasp in a jar, and I guess he's capable of almost anything, though I doubt if murder comes into it. To be honest, I'm worried in case this other girl, Heather Barnabus, has been snuffed in error.

`You still have to clear yourself with the local law, darling.

He nodded, kissed her lightly on the cheek and headed for the bathroom.

Some twenty minutes later, shaved, showered and dressed, he called West End Central Police Station and asked for CID. The line was answered by somebody who called himself Detective Sergeant Tibble.

`The Heather Barnabus murder,' Bond began.

`I'd like to speak with the officer in charge of the investigation." `That would be Detective Chief Superintendent Daily, sir. Can I tell him who's calling?" `Yes. Bond. James Bond.

There was an immediate reaction, as though the detective had been jabbed with a pin. Seconds later a honey-smooth voice came on the line. `DCS Daily, Mr Bond. We've been looking for you." `I've just seen the papers. I'd like to get a few things straight." `So would we, Mr Bond. Where can I pick you up?" `You can't. I'm coming to see you." `You're sure of that?" `Absolutely. I'll be with you in less than half an hour." He gave Fredericka strict instructions. `Stay in this room, even when the chambermaids come to make up the room. Don't let anyone else in. If the phone rings, pick it up and say nothing. .

`I do know how to handle it, James. I've been in the business for some time.

West End Central Police Station is a utilitarian building, without any personality, which lies off Regent Street. Over the years, an encyclopaedia of London's more fashionable criminals has walked up its front steps, and through the swing doors; infamous murderers and insignificant petty villains have sat in its bare unvarnished interrogation rooms. Now, James Bond sat on a chair that was bolted to the floor. Across the table, similarly bolted, sat the smooth-jowled Detective Chief Superintendent George Daily. A second plainclothes man hovered near the door.

Daily's reputation was not unknown to Bond, for he was one of the new generation of policemen, university educated, smart, sharp and eminently likeable. Daily had been with the now renamed Special Branch when it really was special, so he was well known among members of both the Security and Secret Intelligence Services which was probably the reason he had been assigned this case in the first place.

`Well, Captain Bond, I've always wanted to meet you. You have quite a reputation, and I recognized you from the photofit." His accent was not quite what you would call upper class, which was a blessing for that affected drawl was anathema to Bond.

`Then with due respect, Chief Superintendent, why didn't you blaze my name all over this morning's front pages?" Daily gave a little half smile. On the table in front of him were a leather notebook and an expensive gold pen. Bond thought he should mention to the man that it was not always wise to leave something like a pen on a desk when interrogating. He figured his chances and knew he could probably take out Daily by snatching the pen and thrusting it hard into the man's eye. The other cop could be dealt with in a more orthodox manner.

`Why didn't I have you named in the Press release, Mr Bond? Well, I could have been mistaken. We got the photofit from a waiter who says he saw you with the victim. He says you arrived a little before six.

He claims to have actually spoken with you, telling you that they had finished serving tea. You replied that you were to meet someone, and he says he saw you join the victim. Eye witnesses are often wrong.

The description could well have been inaccurate: photofits often are, as I suspect you already know." `So you gave me the benefit of the doubt?" Again Daily gave his most charming smile. `No.

No, not really. I took the precaution of telephoning your Chief when I saw the likeness, and he had a little story for me.

`So you know I was there?" `I do. I also know that you went there to see somebody else, and that's quite important, because the someone else looked very much like the victim.

`You know who she was the person I was meeting?" `Oh, yes. In fact, I've worked with Carmel on a number of occasions, and, while the victim is superficially like her, facially really, she was not at all like her in the flesh so to speak. Yet..

`She could have been mistaken for His Chantry. .

`In the dusk with the light behind her, to quote W. S. Gilbert.

`Oh, I do think you educated policemen are wonderful." Bond gave him a crooked smile. `But you think there was a mistake?" `No doubt in my mind. Once the balloon went up, and I'd spoken with your guy'nor, we removed the other lady from the hotel." His eyes strayed to the plainclothes man by the door. `I think you can leave us now, Meyer." A friendly nod and a wink.

The cop shrugged, but left, closing the door behind him.

`In fact, I have a message from your boss.. `I don't think he'd appreciate being called either guy'nor or boss...

`No? Well, he's not going to hear me, is he? He says that His C is safe and that your Mr Grant is also safe, contained, in fact, under house arrest.

Strikes me that the ladies and gentlemen of the Security Service are in the midst of a crisis." `Does it now?" The last thing he wanted to do was to get drawn into any loose talk concerning MIS. You never knew with policemen.

After a pause that went on a shade too long, Daily said that M also wanted him to telephone.

`He asked me to tell you that he had removed surveillance on you and would you call him. Been a naughty boy, have we, Mr Bond?" `Not so as you'd notice,' he said icily.

He telephoned M from a public coin box, or at least that was what they used to be called before the proliferation of public telephones that only took credit cards, or British Telecom calling cards.

`Just wanted you to know that our sisters have got themselves an almost entirely new Anti-terrorist Section,' M growled.

`About time, if all I've heard is true." `Mmm. Well, I fear it is. The former Head of Department has been guilty of much folly, and many a cover-up. The work got done, but he had to watch his back, and he'll now be doing it from an easy chair on half pension-if that. `You think someone was out to get His C as well as the other late lamented lady, sir?" `Could be. I've spoken to their Director General, and the lady you saw last night is in very safe hands. Now, I will be in touch, just make the most of this enforced rest.

`Of course, sir." He spent almost two hours getting to his final destination, running the back doubles and practising every anti-surveillance trick in the book.

no doubt, had been keeping an eye on him and he had a healthy respect for that; but, with all that seemed to be going on, he wanted to be certain that nobody else was hard on his heels.