The James Bond Anthology

24 | DEATH IS SO PERMANENT

The last thing Bond remembered before the telephone rang was Tiffany bending over him in bed and kissing him and saying, ‘You shouldn’t sleep on the heart-side, my treasure. It’s bad for the heart. It might stop beating. Turn over.’ And obediently he had turned and as the door clicked he was at once asleep again with her voice and the sigh of the Atlantic and the soft roll of the ship holding him in their arms.

And then the angry bell rang in the dark cabin and went on ringing and Bond cursed and reached for it and a voice said, ‘Sorry to disturb you, Sir. This is the wireless operator. There’s a cipher signal just come in for you and it’s got an en clair prefix of “Most Immediate”. Shall I call it out to you or send it down?’

‘Send it down, would you?’said Bond. ‘And thanks.’

Now what the hell? All the beauty and heat and excitement of passionate love were pushed roughly away as he turned on the lights, slipped out of bed and, shaking his head to clear it, took the two steps into the shower.

For a full minute he let the water hit him, and then he rubbed himself down and picked up his trousers and shirt from the floor and climbed into them.

There was a knock on the door and he took the cable and sat down at the desk and lit a cigarette and set grimly to work. And, as the groups gradually dissolved into words, his eyes grew narrower and the skin slowly crawled on his body.

The cable was from the Chief of Staff. It said:

FIRSTLY CLANDESTINE SEARCH OF SAYES OFFICE REVEALED SIGNAL FROM QE ADDRESSED ABC SIGNED WINTER ADVISING OF YOUR AND CASES PRESENCE ABOARD REQUESTING INSTRUCTIONS STOP REPLY ADDRESSED WINTER SIGNED ABC ORDERS ELIMINATION OF CASE COMMA PRICE TWENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS STOP SECONDLY WE CONSIDER RUFUS B SAYE IS ABC WHICH IS PARTLY EQUIVALENT OF HIS INITIALS IN FRENCH THUS AH DASH BAY DASH SAYE STOP THIRDLY POSSIBLY ALERTED BY SIGNS OF SEARCH SAYE FLEW PARIS YESTERDAY AND NOW REPORTED BY INTERPOL BE IN DAKAR STOP THIS TENDS CONFIRM OUR SUSPICION THAT DIAMONDS ORIGINATE SIERRA LEONE MINES THENCE SMUGGLED OVER FRONTIER INTO FRENCH GUINEA STOP WE STRONGLY SUSPECT MEMBER OF SIERRA INTERNATIONALS DENTAL SURGERY STAFF WHO BEING WATCHED STOP FOURTHLY RAF CANBERRA AWAITS YOU BOSCOMBE DOWN FOR IMMEDIATE ONWARD FLIGHT TOMORROW NIGHT TO SIERRA LEONE SIGNED COS.

Bond sat for a moment frozen to his chair. Suddenly, there flashed unwanted into his mind that most sinister line in all poetry: ‘They reckon ill who leave me out. When me they fly, I am the wings.’

So somebody from the Spangled Mob was on board and travelling with them. Who? Where?

His hand snatched at the telephone.

‘Miss Case, please.’

He could hear the telephone beside her bed click and then give its first ring. The second. The third. Just one more. He crashed the receiver back on to its cradle and ran out of his room and up the corridor to her cabin. Nothing. Empty. The bed unslept in. The lights burning. But her evening bag lay on the carpet by the door and its contents were scattered around it. She had come in. The man had been behind the door. Perhaps a cosh had fallen. And then what?

The portholes were closed. He looked into the bathroom. Nothing.

Bond stood in the middle of the cabin and his mind was as cold as ice. What would he, Bond, have done? Before he killed her he would have questioned her. Found out what she knew, what she had told, who this man Bond was. Got her to his cabin where he could work on her undisturbed. If somebody met him carrying her there, it would only have needed a wink and a shake of the head. ‘Bit too much champagne tonight. No thanks, I can manage.’ But which cabin? How long had he got?

Bond looked at his watch as he ran back down the silent corridor. Three o’clock. She must have left him some time after two. Should he call the bridge? Give the alarm? A ghastly vista of explanation, suspicions, delays. ‘My dear Sir. That hardly seems possible.’ Attempts to calm him. ‘Of course, Sir, we’ll do our best.’ The polite eyes of the Sergeant-at-Arms who would be thinking in terms of drunkenness and crossing in love – even of someone trying to delay the ship so as to win the Low Field in the Ship’s Auction.

The Low Field! Man overboard! The ship delayed!

Bond slammed the door of his cabin and dived for the Passenger List. Of course. Winter. Here he was. A49. The deck below. And then suddenly Bond’s mind clicked like a comptometer. Winter. Wint and Kidd. The two torpedoes. The men in the hoods. Back to the passenger list. Kitteridge. In A49 too. The white-haired man and the fat man in the B.O.A.C. plane from London. ‘My blood group is F’. The secret escort for Tiffany. And Leiter’s description. ‘He’s called “Windy” because he hates travelling.’ ‘One day that wart on his thumb will catch him out.’ The red wart on the first joint holding back the hammer of the gun over Tingaling Bell. And Tiffany saying, ‘They’re screwy. The fat man’s sucking his thumb!’ And the two men in the Smoking Room cashing in on the death that had been arranged. The woman overboard. The alarm given anonymously in case the stern watch missed her. The ship stopped, turning, searching. And three thousand pounds extra to the killers.

Wint and Kidd. The torpedoes from Detroit.

The whole reel of jumbled pictures whirred through Bond’s mind in a flash of revelation and even while he was scanning them he was opening his small attaché case and extracting the squat silencer from its hidden pocket. Automatically, as he took the Beretta from amongst his shirts at the back of a drawer, checked the magazine and screwed the silencer into the muzzle, he was weighing the odds and planning his moves.

He hunted for the ship’s plan that had come with his ticket. Spread it out while he pulled on his socks. A49. Directly below him. Was there any chance of shooting the lock off the door and getting both of them before they got him? Practically none. And they would have bolted the door as well as locked it. Or take some of the staff with him, if he could persuade them of the danger to Tiffany? During the palaver and ‘Excuse me, Sirs’ they would get her out of the porthole and be innocently reading books or playing cards and ‘What’s all the fuss about?’

Bond shoved the gun into his waistband and wrenched one of his two portholes wide open. He thrust his shoulders through, relieved to find that there was at least an inch to spare. He craned down. Two dimly lit circles directly below him. How far? About eight feet. The night was still dead calm. No wind, and he was on the dark side of the ship. Would he be spotted from the flying bridge? Would one of their portholes be open?

Bond dropped back into his cabin and tore the sheets off his bed. The Blood Knot. That would be safest. But he would have to rip the sheets in half to get enough length. If he won, he would have to get some sheets from A49 and leave their steward to puzzle out the loss. If he lost, nothing would matter.

Bond put all his strength on the rope. Should hold. As he tied one end round the hinge of the porthole he glanced at his watch. Only twelve minutes had been wasted since he had read the cable. Had it been too long? He set his teeth and threw the rope out down the side of the ship and climbed out head foremost.

Don’t think. Don’t look down. Don’t look up. Never mind the knots. Slowly, firmly, hand over hand.

The night wind tugged softly at him and swayed him against the black iron rivets, and from far down below sounded the deep boom and woosh of the sea. From somewhere above came the ropey twang of the wind of their speed in the rigging and, far above that, the stars would be swinging slowly round the twin masts.

Would the blasted, the beloved, sheets hold? Would vertigo get him? Could his arms stand the weight? Don’t think about it. Don’t think of the huge ship, the hungry sea, the great quadruple screws waiting to slice into his body. You are a boy climbing down an apple tree. It’s so easy and so safe there in the orchard with the grass to fall on.

Bond shut his mind and watched his hands and felt the roughness of the paint against his knuckles, and his feet were as sensitive as antennae as they groped below him for the first contact with the porthole.

There. The toes of his right foot had touched the protruding rim. He must stop. He MUST be patient and let his foot explore further – the wide-open porthole, held by its big brass latch; the feel of cloth against his sock: the curtains closed. Now he could go on. It was nearly over.

And then two more handholds and his face was level and he could get a hand to the metal rim of the frame and take some of the weight off the taut white rope and give one arm a blessed rest, and then the other, shifting the burden from the cracking muscles and gathering himself for the slow heave up and through and then the final dive with one hand clutching for his gun.

He listened, gazing at the circle of slowly swaying curtain, trying to forget that he was clinging like a fly half-way down the side of the Queen Elizabeth, trying not to listen to the sea far below him, trying to still his own heavy breath and the hammering of his heart.

There was a mumble inside the little room. A few words in a masculine voice. And then a girl’s voice crying ‘No!’

There was a moment’s silence, and then a slap. It was as loud as a pistol shot and it jerked Bond’s body up and through the porthole as if he had been wrenched inwards by a rope.

Even as he somehow dived cleanly through the three-foot circle he was wondering what he would hit, and his left arm protected his head as his right went to his gun.

Crash on to a suitcase under the porthole, a ragged somersault that took him half across the room, and he was on his feet and backing, crouched low, towards the portholes, and the knuckles were white with tension on his gun hand and there was a thin white line round his clenched lips.

Through the slitted lids the ice-grey eyes flickered from side to side. The blunt, black gun stood at dead centre between the two men.

‘All right,’ said Bond, coming slowly to his full height.

It was a statement of fact. He had the control and the mouth of his gun had said he should have it.

‘Who sent for you?’ said the fat man. ‘You’re not in the act.’

There were hidden reserves in the voice. No panic. Not even enough surprise.

‘Come to make a fourth at gin?’

He was sitting, in buttoned shirt sleeves, sideways-on to the dressing-table, and the small eyes glittered in the moist face. In front of him, with her back to Bond, Tiffany Case sat on an upholstered stool. She was naked except for brief flesh-coloured pants and her knees were gripped between the big man’s thighs. Her face, with red marks across its paleness, was turned towards Bond. Her eyes were wild, like a trapped animal’s, and her mouth was open with disbelief.

The white-haired man had been lying relaxed on one of the beds. Now he was up on one elbow and his other hand was at his shirt, half-way up to the gun in the black holster at his armpit. He looked incuriously at Bond and his mouth was square with the empty letter-box smile. From the middle of his smile a wooden toothpick protruded from between closed teeth like the tongue of a snake.

Bond’s gun held the neutral space between the two men. When he spoke his voice was low and taut.

‘Tiffany,’ he said slowly and distinctly. ‘Get down on your knees. Edge away from that man. Keep your head down. Get into the middle of the room.’

He didn’t watch her, and his eyes continued to flicker between the man on the chair and the man on the bed.

Now she was clear of the two targets.

‘I’m there, James.’ The voice thrilled with hope and excitement.

‘Get up and walk straight into the bathroom. Shut the door. Get into the bath and lie down.’

His eyes slid towards her to see that he was being obeyed. She had stood up and was facing him. His eyes registered the red splay of a whole hand on the white skin of her body. Then she had obeyed him and there was the click of the bathroom door shutting.

Now she was safe from the bullets. And she would not witness what had to be done.

There was five yards between the two men and Bond reflected that if they could draw fast enough they had him bracketed. With men like these, even in the split second of his killing one of them, the other would have drawn and fired. While his own gun was silent, its threat was infinite. But with his first bullet, for a flash, the threat would be lifted from the other man.

‘Forty-eight sixty-five eighty-six.’

The variation on the American football signal, one of fifty other combinations which they must have practised together a thousand times, spat out of the fat man’s mouth. Simultaneously he hurled himself on the floor and his hand flashed to his waistband.

In a swirl of motion the man on the bed swung his legs side-ways and away from Bond so that his body was now only a narrow head-on target. The hand at his chest flickered up.

‘Thud’.

Bond’s gun gave a single muffled grunt. A blue keyhole opened just beneath the peak of the white hair.

‘Boom’ answered the dead man’s pistol, fired by the last twitch of his finger, and the bullet buried itself into the bed beneath his corpse.

The fat man on the floor let out a scream. He was looking up into the single empty black eye that didn’t care about him one way or the other, but was only interested in which square centimetre of his envelope it would open first.

And the fat man’s gun had only achieved the elevation of Bond’s knees and was pointing futilely between Bond’s braced legs at the white-painted ironwork behind him.

‘Drop it.’

There was a small noise as the gun fell to the carpet.

‘Get up.’

The fat man scrambled to his feet and stood looking into Bond’s eyes, as a tubercular looks into his handkerchief, with fearful expectancy.

‘Sit down.’

Was there a flash of relief in the surrendered eyes? Bond stayed tense as a stalking cat.

The fat man turned slowly. He stretched his hands above his head, although Bond had not told him to do so. He took the two steps back to his chair and slowly turned round as if to sit down.

He stood facing Bond and quite naturally he let his hands fall down to his sides. And the two hands, relaxed, swung naturally back, the right hand more than the left. And then suddenly, at the top of the back-swing, the right arm tautened and flashed forward and the throwing-knife bloomed from the tips of the fingers like a white flame.

‘Thud’.

The quiet bullet and the quiet knife crossed in midair, and the eyes of the two men flinched simultaneously as the weapons struck.

But the flinch in the eyes of the fat man turned into an upward roll of the eyeballs as he fell backwards, clawing at his heart, while Bond’s eyes only looked incuriously down at the spreading stain on his shirt and at the flat handle of the knife hanging loosely from its folds.

There was a crash as the chair splintered under the fat man, and a rasping noise, and then a drumming on the floor.

Bond looked once and then turned away towards the open porthole.

For a while he stood with his back to the room, staring at the softly swaying curtains. He gulped down the air and listened to the beautiful sea-sounds from the world outside that still belonged to him and to Tiffany, but not to the two others. Very slowly his body and his strung nerves relaxed.

After a time he pulled the knife out of his shirt. He didn’t look at it, but reached up and drew the curtain aside and threw the knife far out into the blackness. Then, still looking out into the quiet night, he put up the safe of the Beretta and, with a hand that suddenly seemed as heavy as lead, slowly thrust the gun back into the waistband of his trousers.

Almost reluctantly he turned back and faced the shambles of the cabin. He looked it over thoughtfully and with an unconscious gesture he wiped his hands down his flanks. Then he carefully picked his way across the floor to the bathroom and said, ‘It’s me, Tiffany,’ in a tired, flat voice and opened the door.

She hadn’t heard his voice. She was lying face downwards in the empty bath with her hands over her ears, and when he had half-lifted her out and had taken her into his arms, she still couldn’t believe it but clung to him and then slowly explored his face and his chest with her hands to make sure it was true.

He flinched as her hand touched his cut rib and she broke away from him and looked at his face and then at the blood on her fingers and then at his scarlet shirt.

‘Oh, God. You’re hurt,’ she said flatly, and her nightmares were forgotten as she took off his shirt and washed the gashed rib with soap and water and bound it with strips of towel cut with one of the dead men’s razor blades.

She still asked no questions when Bond collected her clothes from the floor of the cabin and gave them to her and told her not to come out until he was ready and to clean up everything and wipe every object she had touched to kill the fingerprints.

She just stood and looked at him with her eyes shining. And when Bond kissed her on the lips she still said nothing.

Bond gave her a reassuring smile and walked out and shut the door of the bathroom behind him and went about his business, doing everything with great deliberation and pausing before each move so as to examine its effect on the eyes and minds of the detectives who would come on board at Southampton.

First he tied an ash-tray in his bloodstained shirt to weight it and went to the porthole and threw the shirt as far out as he could. The men’s tuxedos were hanging behind the door. He took the handkerchiefs out of the breast pockets and wrapped them round his hands and searched through the cupboards and the chest of drawers until he found the white-haired man’s evening shirts. He put one on and stood for a moment in the centre of the cabin thinking. Then he gritted his teeth and heaved the fat man into a sitting position, took off the fat man’s shirt and went to the porthole and took out his Beretta, held it against the small hole over the heart of the shirt and fired another bullet through the hole. Now there was a smoke smudge round the hole to look like suicide. He dressed the corpse again in its shirt, wiped his Beretta thoroughly, pressed the fingers of the dead man’s right hand all over it, and finally fitted the gun into his hand with the index finger on the trigger.

After another pause in the middle of the room, he took Kidd’s tuxedo down from its hook and dressed the corpse of Kidd in it. Then he dragged the man across the floor to the porthole and, sweating with the effort, heaved him up into the porthole and pushed him through.

He wiped the porthole for prints and paused again, getting his breath and surveying the small stage, and then he went over to the card table that stood, with the litter of an unfinished game, against the wall, and upset it on the floor so that the cards scattered on the carpet. As an afterthought he went again to the fat man’s body, extracted the wad of notes from his hip-pocket and strewed them amongst the cards.

Surely the picture would stand up. There would be the mystery of the bullet fired into the bed by the dying Kidd, but that would have been part of the struggle. There were three shots gone from the Beretta and three cartridges on the floor. Two of the bullets could have been in the body of Kidd which was now in the Atlantic. There were the two sheets he would have to steal off the second bed. Their loss would be unexplained. Perhaps Wint had wrapped Kidd’s body in them as a shroud before he pushed Kidd out of the porthole. That would fit in with Wint’s remorse and suicide following the gunfight over the cards.

At all events, reflected Bond, it would stand up until the police arrived at the dock, and by that time he and Tiffany would be off the ship and away and the only trace of them in the cabin would be Bond’s Beretta, and that, like all other guns belonging to the Secret Service, had no numbers.

He sighed and shrugged his shoulders. And now to take the sheets and get Tiffany back to his cabin without being seen, cut down the rope dangling from his porthole, throw it out into the sea with the spare magazines for the Beretta and the empty holster and then, at last, an age of sleep with her dear body dovetailed against his and his arms round her forever.

Forever?

As he walked slowly across the cabin to the bathroom, Bond met the blank eyes of the body on the floor.

And the eyes of the man whose Blood Group had been F spoke to him and said, ‘Mister. Nothing is forever. Only death is permanent. Nothing is forever except what you did to me.’