No Deals, Mr. Bond

3

DARE TO BE CHIC

The Headquarters Registry was on the second floor, guarded by girls usually dressed in casual jeans and shirts. Until a few years ago the uniform was twin sets, pearls and well cut skirts from Harrods or Harvey Nichols. M rarely went near the Registry since the rules had been relaxed, but he had been as good as his word in giving Bond the information he needed.

In the park, he rattled off names and file prefixes, made Bond repeat them and then told him to take one more turn round the Inner Circle before returning to the high, anonymous building housing the Service Headquarters.

A tall, inscrutable goddess jotted down the file numbers as Bond gave them to her and took the slip of paper to the Watch Officer. There were no questions, not even a raised eyebrow from the Watch Officer, whose name was Rowena MacShine-Jones – known to all as Registry Shiner. Ms MacShine-Jones gave the nod and the computers were set in motion. Within five minutes, the goddess returned with a thick plastic file which was flagged in red, meaning it was Classified A+. The date and the words These documents must not be taken from the building. Return by 16.30hrs appeared on the front. Bond knew that if he ignored the instruction to return them, one of the Registry guardians would seek him out and bring the documents back for shredding and burning. Equally, if he tried to get them out of the file, let alone the building, a ‘smart card’ contained in the spine would trigger a series of alarms.

On his office desk he found a similar file flagged with the same classification, except this one had to be returned to the Eighth Floor, which meant to M personally.

Within an hour, Bond had been through both sets of files, imprinting the information on his memory. He spent another hour rechecking his memory against the documents. After that he returned the Registry file and took the second one up to M’s office.

‘I think he’ll see me,’ Bond said, smiling at Miss Moneypenny as he entered the outer office.

‘More leave, James? He mentioned you might want to take some.’

‘Only for unexpected family business.’ Bond looked her straight in the eyes, like any trained dissembler.

Moneypenny sighed. ‘Oh, that I could be part of that family. I know what business you fabricate for this kind of leave.’

‘Penny, if that were true there’s nothing I’d like better.’

The intercom buzzed and M’s voice came clearly through the speaker. ‘If that’s 007, Moneypenny, send him in here and stop your gossiping. The pair of you act like old washerwomen when you get together.’

Moneypenny gave Bond a soulful look, raising her eyes heavenwards. Bond merely smiled at his Chief’s crustiness and, seeing the green light come on over M’s door, gave a small, courteous bow to Moneypenny and went into the inner sanctum.

‘Come to return the grisly papers, sir.’

He placed M’s file on the desk. It contained the police reports on the two murders, including the highly disturbing photographs. Violent death is easier to gaze upon in reality than when captured for ever by the camera. The two girls’ skulls had been crushed from behind. Their tongues had been removed with almost surgical precision after death; the police officer in charge had commented upon the apparent medical knowledge of the murderer. There was little doubt, according to the reports, that the same person, or persons, had carried out the executions. M drew the file towards him without comment. ‘Moneypenny said you’d put in an application for two weeks’ compassionate leave, 007. True or false?’

‘True, sir.’

‘Good. Then you can leave right away. I trust things work out for you.’

‘Thank you, sir. I think I’ll visit Q Branch before I go, but I really do have to get to Mayfair before six.’

M nodded, satisfaction flickering for a second in those icy grey eyes. A look of tacit understanding passed between the two men. Of the three remaining prospective victims, the nearest – Heather Dare – owned a beauty salon just around the corner from the Mayfair Hotel. This was a pleasant coincidence, for Bond occasionlly dined in that hotel’s particularly good Le Chateau Restaurant, not merely for the justly excellent food, but for the security offered by its half dozen special alcoved and very private tables, which are well away from the eyes and ears of other clients.

M dismissed Bond with an almost cursory flick of his right hand, and he made his way into the bowels of the building where the Armourer, Major Boothroyd, controlled Q Branch. It happened that the Major was away and Bond found the Branch operating under the expertise of his assistant, the long-legged, bespectacled but unashamedly delicious Ann Reilly, known to everyone in the Service as Q’ute. In her early days with Q Branch, Bond and Q’ute had seen a lot of each other, but with the passage of years and Bond’s unreliable timetable, the relationship had become merely friendly.

‘James, how nice,’ she said in greeting. ‘To what do we owe the pleasure? Nothing new brewing, is there?’

‘I’m on leave for a couple of weeks. Thought I’d collect some bits and pieces.’

He deliberately played it down. If he had been on normal leave he would have to sign out a CC500 scrambler telephone. In fact he wanted to pick her brains and maybe borrow some small new technological device.

‘We’ve got a few pieces on test. Maybe you’d like to take away a sample.’ Q’ute grinned, wickedly alluring. ‘Come into my parlour,’ she said and Bond wondered if M had given her guarded instructions.

They walked briskly down the long room where shirtsleeved young men were seated in front of VDUs and others worked through huge lighted magnifiers on electronic boards.

‘Nowadays,’ said Q’ute, ‘everyone wants it smaller, with a longer range, and more memory.’

‘Speak for yourself.’

It was Bond’s turn to smile, though it did not even light up his eyes. His mind was full of the gruesome photographs of two young girls battered to death, even though he knew Q’ute talked of sound-stealing, movement-theft, concealment and deadly devices.

He left half an hour later with some small items in addition to the obligatory CC500. This, according to current instructions, would be no use to him, for both M and the Foreign Office would deny him entirely until the assignment was completed. At the door of her office, Q’ute put a hand gently on Bond’s arm.

‘If you need anything from here, just call and I’ll bring it to you myself.’

He looked into her face and saw that he had been right – instructions of some kind had been given to Q’ute by M.

The participants were to be hoovered clean, given a face lift and then left alone, M had said. Bond knew what that meant. It was like being cut out of some rich relation’s will and if he fouled up, he would suffer the same fate as the Cream Cake agents.

In the Bentley Mulsanne Turbo, tucked away in the underground car park, Bond checked the ASP 9mm automatic, its spare clips and the hard steel telescopic Concealable Operations Baton. With his getaway case, containing a week’s spare clothes, in the boot, he was prepared for what the instructors called street work. He started the engine and the car glided smoothly out of its parking slot and up the ramp into the spring sunshine of London’s streets, where he was conscious of death only a stone’s throw from the pavements.

Some twenty minutes later he was on those very pavements, passing Langan’s Brasserie in Stratton Street, its garish red neon blazing even in the afternoon.

At the Mayfair Hotel Bond handed the car over to the blueliveried doorman with a discreet Parachute Regiment badge in his lapel, knowing it would be quickly put on a parking meter and watched during his absence. From there to the beauty salon Dare To Be Chic at the end of Stratton Street took him only three minutes.

The choice of Dare he could understand, for the girl’s German family name had been Wagen, so this was a literal translation. Where the Heather had come from heaven, and the Service resettlement officers, alone knew.

The windows of the salon were black, the bold lettering daring you to be chic in gold accompanied by an art deco motif of a bobbed-haired woman sporting a cigarette holder. Inside was a minute foyer, thickly carpeted and with a single Kurosaki wood block print, which to Bond resembled a magician’s box opened in front of a row of pyramids. The elevator door was gold and its button was neatly labelled with the Dare motif.

Bond pressed, stepped into the mirrored cage and was whisked silently upwards. Like the foyer, the elevator was carpeted in deep crimson. The lift came gently to a halt and he found himself in another foyer. Double doors led to the rooms where clients subjected themselves to heat, facials and the expertise of hairdressers and masseurs. There was the same red carpet, another Kurosaki print and to the right a door marked ‘Private’. In front of him a golden blonde dressed in a severe black suit and blazing white silk shirt sat at a kidney-shaped desk. She looked as though her face had been cleansed of every particle of dust and grease and each strand of her hair cemented in position. Her lips parted in an encouraging smile while her eyes asked what the hell a man was doing in this woman’s preserve. Bond felt about as welcome as when he visited his sister Service, MI5.

‘Can I be of help, sir?’ She spoke in the accents of a shop assistant emulating an aristocratic drawl.

‘Quite possibly. I wish to see Ms Dare,’ said Bond, giving her his patently insincere smile.

The receptionist’s expression became fixed as she said she was most terribly sorry but Ms Dare was not in this afternoon. The reply lacked conviction and the eyes flickered an instant towards the door marked Private. He sighed, took out a blank card, wrote one sentence on it and pushed it towards the girl.

‘Be a darling and take this to her. I’ll mind the store. It is very important, and I’m sure you wouldn’t want me to walk in on her without being invited.’

When the girl hesitated, he added that Ms Dare could look at him on the monitor – inclining his head towards the security camera high up in the corner by the door – and if she did not like what she saw he would move on. The blonde still could not make up her mind, so he added that it was official and flashed his ID – the impressive, fully laminated one with coloured lettering rather than the real thing, which was plain plastic in a little leather folder.

‘If you’ll wait one moment I’ll see if she’s come back. Ms Dare was certainly out earlier this afternoon.’

She disappeared through the private door and Bond turned to face the camera. On the card he had written, ‘I come in peace with gifts. Remember the gallant submariners.’ It took five minutes but it worked like a charm. The golden girl showed him through the door, along a narrow corridor and up some steps to another very solid-looking door.

‘She says to go straight in.’

Bond went straight in to find himself staring down the wrong end of a piece of gunmetal blue which, by its size and shape, he recognised as a Colt Woodsman – the Match Target model. In the United States they would call it a plinking pistol, but a plinking pistol can still kill and Bond was always respectful in the presence of any such weapon, particularly when it was held as steadily as this, and pointed directly at him.

‘Irma,’ he said in a slightly admonishing tone. ‘Irma, please put away the gun. I’m here to help.’

As he spoke, Bond noted that there was no other exit and that Heather Dare, née Irma Wagen of Operation Cream Cake, had placed herself in the correct position, with legs slightly apart, back against the left hand side of the rear wall, eyes watching and steady.

‘It is you,’ she said without lowering the pistol.

‘In the flesh,’ he replied with his most genuine smile, ‘though to be honest I wouldn’t have recognised you. The last occasion we spent time together you were a bundle of sweaters, jeans and fear.’

‘And now it’s only the fear,’ she said without a trace of a smile.

Heather Dare’s accent held no vestige of German. She had adopted her cover entirely. She had become a very poised, attractive lady with dark hair, a tall slim frame and long, shapely legs. Her elegance went with the business she had managed to build up over the last five years, but underneath, Bond sensed a toughness, maybe even ingrained stubbornness.

‘Yes, I understand about the fear,’ he said. ‘That’s why I’m here.’

‘I didn’t think they’d send anybody.’

‘They didn’t. I was simply tipped off. I’m on my own, but I do have the training and skills. Now, put the gun down so that I can get you away to somewhere that’s safe. I’m going to haul in the three of you that are still alive.’

Slowly she shook her head. ‘Oh no, Mr . . .’

‘Bond. James Bond.’

‘Oh no, Mr Bond. The bastards have got Franzi and Elli. I’m going to make certain they don’t get my other friends.’

The Hammond girl’s real name was Franziska Trauben; while Millicent Zampek had been known as Eleonore Zuckermann.

‘That’s what I said.’ Bond took a pace forward. ‘You’ll go to a safe place where nobody’s going to find you. Then I’ll take care of the bastards myself.’

‘Then where you go, I go; until it’s over, one way or another.’

Bond had experienced enough of women to realise that this stubbornness could neither be fought nor reasoned with. He looked at her for a moment, pleased with her slender build and the femininity which lay under the well-cut grey suit set off by a pink blouse and thin gold chain and pendant. The suit looked very French. Paris, he thought, probably Givenchy.

‘Do you have any ideas how we should handle it then, Heather? I do call you Heather don’t I, not Irma?’

‘Heather,’ she murmured very low. After a pause she said, ‘I’m sorry, I called the others by their original names. Yes, I’ve thought of myself as Heather ever since your people sent me out into the real world with a new name. But I have difficulty thinking of the old gang in new guises.’

‘On Cream Cake you were interconscious? I mean, you knew one another? Knew what each target was?’

She gave a brief nod. ‘By real names and by street names. Yes, we were interconscious of each other, of the targets, of our control. No cut-outs. That’s why Emilie and I were together when you picked us off that little beach.’ She hesitated, then frowned, shaking her head. ‘Sorry, I mean Ebbie. Emilie Nikolas is Ebbie now.’

‘Yes, Ebbie Heritage, isn’t it?’

‘That’s correct. We happen to be old friends. I spoke to her this morning.’

‘In Dublin?’

Heather smiled. ‘You are well informed. Yes, in Dublin.’

‘On an open line? You spoke on an open line?’

‘Don’t worry, Mr Bond . . .’

‘James.’

‘Yes. Don’t worry, James, I said only three words. You see, I spent some time with Ebbie before this salon got started. We made a simple code for speaking on an open line. It went,

“Elizabeth is sick”, and the reply, “I’ll be with you this afternoon”.’

‘Meaning?’

‘The same as “How’s your mother”, which was the Cream Cake warning, slipped into a conversation. “Mother” was the trigger: “You’re blown. Take the necessary action.” ’

‘The same as it was five years ago.’

‘Yes, and we’re about to take that necessary action again now. You see, James, I’ve been in Paris. I flew back this morning. On the aeroplane I saw the report of the murders. It was the first I knew of it. Once would have put us on guard, but twice, and with the . . . the tongue . . .’ For the first time she sounded shaken. She swallowed, visibly pulling herself together. ‘The tongues made it certain. It’s a charming warning, isn’t it?’

‘Not subtle.’

‘Warnings and revenge killings are seldom subtle. You know what the Mafia does to adulterers within a family?’

He nodded sharply. ‘It’s not pretty, but it makes its point.’ For an instant he recalled the last time he had heard of such a murder, with the man’s genitalia hacked off.

‘The tongue makes a point too.’

‘Right. Then what does “Elizabeth is sick” mean?’

‘That we’ve been blown. Meet me where arranged.’

‘Which is?’

‘Which is where I’m going, on the Aer Lingus flight from Heathrow at 8.30 tonight.’

‘Dublin?’

Again she nodded. ‘Yes, Dublin. I’ll hire a car there and head for the rendezvous. Ebbie will have been waiting there since this afternoon.’

‘And you did the same for Frank Baisley, or Franz Belzinger? The one known as Jungle?’

She was still tense, but she gave a little smile. ‘He was always a joker. A bit of a risk-taker. His street name had been Wald, German for forest. Now he calls himself Jungle. No, I couldn’t get a message to him because I don’t know where he is.’

‘I do.’

‘Where?’

‘Quite a long way off. Now, tell me where you are meeting Ebbie.’

She hesitated for a second.

‘Come on,’ urged Bond, ‘I’m here to help. I’m coming with you to Dublin anyway. I have to. Where do you plan to meet?’

‘Oh, we decided a long time ago that the best way to hide is in the open. We agreed upon Ashford Castle in County Mayo. It’s the hotel where President Reagan stayed.’

Bond smiled. It was sound professional thinking. The Ashford Castle Hotel is luxurious and expensive, and the last place on earth a hit team would think of looking.

Then he asked, ‘Can we look as though we’re having a business meeting? Do you mind if I use your telephone?’

She sat down behind her long desk and locked the Woodsman in a drawer. Then she spread papers around and pushed the telephone towards him. Bond dialled the Aer Lingus reservation desk at Heathrow and booked himself on flight EI 177, Club Class, in the name of Boldman.

‘My car’s just around the corner,’ he said as he put down the receiver. ‘We’ll leave here about seven o’clock. It’ll be dusk and I presume all your staff will have left.’

She glanced at her neat Cartier watch and her eyebrows rose. ‘They’ll be finished very soon now . . .’

As though on cue, her telephone rang. Bond guessed it was the blonde because Heather said that yes, they should all leave. She was working late with the gentleman who had called and she would make sure that the building was locked. She would see them all in the morning.

As the glowing spring day faded and the grumble of traffic from Piccadilly dwindled, they sat and talked, Bond gently probing her about Cream Cake. He learned quite a lot more than he had gathered from the files that afternoon. Heather Dare held herself responsible for the panic call to all five participants, ‘I’m sorry, Gustav has cancelled dinner.’ She had been working their prime target, Colonel Maxim Smolin, who during that period was the second in command at the HVA. She told him unwittingly a great deal about herself and about the inner workings of Cream Cake, alerting him to a few deceptions left out or excised from the files.

At five to seven he asked if she had a coat, and she nodded, going to the small, built-in wardrobe and slipping into a white trenchcoat that was far too easily identifiable, and very definitely French, for only the French can make raincoats that have flair. He ordered her to lock up the Woodsman. Then, together, they left her office, switching out lights as they went, and into the elevator cage, hissing down to street level. The lights went out of their own accord just as they reached the small ground floor foyer and, as the doors opened onto gloom, Heather screamed and the attacker came at her like a human typhoon.