The James Bond Anthology

3 | HOLIDAY TASK

It was getting dark. Outside the weather was thickening. M. reached over and switched on the green-shaded desklight. The centre of the room became a warm yellow pool in which the leather top of the desk glowed blood-red.

M. pulled the thick file towards him. Bond noticed it for the first time. He read the reversed lettering without difficulty. What had Strangways been up to? Who was Trueblood?

M. pressed a button on his desk. ‘I’ll get the Chief of Staff in on this,’ he said. ‘I know the bones of the case, but he can fill in the flesh. It’s a drab little story, I’m afraid.’

The Chief of Staff came in. He was a colonel in the Sappers, a man of about Bond’s age, but his hair was prematurely grey at the temples from the endless grind of work and responsibility. He was saved from a nervous breakdown by physical toughness and a sense of humour. He was Bond’s best friend at headquarters. They smiled at each other.

‘Bring up a chair, Chief of Staff. I’ve given 007 the Strangways case. Got to get the mess cleared up before we make a new appointment there. 007 can be acting Head of Station in the meantime. I want him to leave in a week. Would you fix that with the Colonial Office and the Governor? And now let’s go over the case.’ He turned to Bond. ‘I think you knew Strangways, 007. See you worked with him on that treasure business about five years ago. What did you think of him?’

‘Good man, sir. Bit highly strung. I’d have thought he’d have been relieved by now. Five years is a long time in the tropics.’

M. ignored the comment. ‘And his number two, this girl Trueblood, Mary Trueblood. Ever come across her?’

‘No, sir.’

‘I see she’s got a good record. Chief Officer W.R.N.S. and then came to us. Nothing against her on her Confidential Record. Good-looker to judge from her photographs. That probably explains it. Would you say Strangways was a bit of a womanizer?’

‘Could have been,’ said Bond carefully, not wanting to say anything against Strangways, but remembering the dashing good looks. ‘But what’s happened to them, sir?’

‘That’s what we want to find out,’ said M. ‘They’ve gone, vanished into thin air. Both went on the same evening about three weeks ago. Left Strangways’s bungalow burned to the ground – radio, codebooks, files. Nothing left but a few charred scraps. The girl left all her things intact. Must have taken only what she stood up in. Even her passport was in her room. But it would have been easy for Strangways to cook up two passports. He had plenty of blanks. He was Passport Control Officer for the island. Any number of planes they could have taken – to Florida or South America or one of the other islands in his area. Police are still checking the passenger lists. Nothing’s come up yet, but they could always have gone to ground for a day or two and then done a bunk. Dyed the girl’s hair and so forth. Airport security doesn’t amount to much in that part of the world. Isn’t that so, Chief of Staff?’

‘Yes, sir.’ The Chief of Staff sounded dubious. ‘But I still can’t understand that last radio contact.’ He turned to Bond. ‘You see, they began to make their routine contact at eighteen-thirty Jamaican time. Someone, Radio Security thinks it was the girl, acknowledged our WWW and then went off the air. We tried to regain contact but there was obviously something fishy and we broke off. No answer to the Blue Call, or to the Red. So that was that. Next day Section III sent 258 down from Washington. By that time the police had taken over and the Governor had already made up his mind and was trying to get the case hushed up. It all seemed pretty obvious to him. Strangways has had occasional girl trouble down there. Can’t blame the chap myself. It’s a quiet station. Not much to occupy his time. The Governor jumped to the obvious conclusions. So, of course, did the local police. Sex and machete fights are about all they understand. 258 spent a week down there and couldn’t turn up a scrap of contrary evidence. He reported accordingly and we sent him back to Washington. Since then the police have been scraping around rather ineffectually and getting nowhere.’ The Chief of Staff paused. He looked apologetically at M. ‘I know you’re inclined to agree with the Governor, sir, but that radio contact sticks in my throat. I just can’t see where it fits into the runaway-couple picture. And Strangways’s friends at his club say he was perfectly normal. Left in the middle of a rubber of bridge – always did, when he was getting close to his deadline. Said he’d be back in twenty minutes. Ordered drinks all round – again just as he always did – and left the club dead on six-fifteen, exactly to schedule. Then he vanished into thin air. Even left his car in front of the club. Now, why should he set the rest of his bridge four looking for him if he wanted to skip with the girl? Why not leave in the morning, or better still, late at night, after they’d made their radio call and tidied up their lives? It just doesn’t make sense to me.’

M. grunted non-committally. ‘People in – er – love do stupid things,’ he said gruffly. ‘Act like lunatics sometimes. And anyway, what other explanation is there? Absolutely no trace of foul play – no reason for it that anyone can see. It’s a quiet station down there. Same routines every month – an occasional communist trying to get into the island from Cuba, crooks from England thinking they can hide away just because Jamaica’s so far from London. I don’t suppose Strangways has had a big case since 007 was there.’ He turned to Bond. ‘On what you’ve heard, what do you think, 007? There’s not much else to tell you.’

Bond was definite. ‘I just can’t see Strangways flying off the handle like that, sir. I daresay he was having an affair with the girl, though I wouldn’t have thought he was a man to mix business with pleasure. But the Service was his whole life. He’d never have let it down. I can see him handing in his papers, and the girl doing the same, and then going off with her after you’d sent out reliefs. But I don’t believe it was in him to leave us in the air like this. And from what you say of the girl, I’d say it would be much the same with her. Chief Officers W.R.N.S. don’t go out of their senses.’

‘Thank you, 007.’ M.’s voice was controlled. ‘These considerations had also crossed my mind. No one’s been jumping to conclusions without weighing all the possibilities. Perhaps you can suggest another solution.’

M. sat back and waited. He reached for his pipe and began filling it. The case bored him. He didn’t like personnel problems, least of all messy ones like this. There were plenty of other worries waiting to be coped with round the world. It was only to give Bond the pretence of a job, mixed with a good rest, that he had decided to send him out to Jamaica to close the case. He put the pipe in his mouth and reached for the matches. ‘Well?’

Bond wasn’t going to be put off his stride. He had liked Strangways and he was impressed by the points the Chief of Staff had made. He said: ‘Well, sir. For instance, what was the last case Strangways was working on? Had he reported anything, or was there anything Section III had asked him to look into. Anything at all in the last few months?’

‘Nothing whatsoever.’ M. was definite. He took the pipe out of his mouth and cocked it at the Chief of Staff. ‘Right?’

‘Right, sir,’ said the Chief of Staff. ‘Only that damned business about the birds.’

‘Oh that,’ said M. contemptuously. ‘Some rot from the Zoo or somebody. Got wished on us by the Colonial Office. About six weeks ago, wasn’t it?’

‘That’s right, sir. But it wasn’t the Zoo. It was some people in America called the Audubon Society. They protect rare birds from extinction or something like that. Got on to our Ambassador in Washington, and the F.O. passed the buck to the Colonial Office. They shoved it on to us. Seems these bird people are pretty powerful in America. They even got an atom bombing range shifted on the West Coast because it interfered with some birds’ nests.’

M. snorted. ‘Damned thing called a Whooping Crane. Read about it in the papers.’

Bond persisted. ‘Could you tell me about it, sir? What did the Audubon people want us to do?’

M. waved his pipe impatiently. He picked up the Strangways file and tossed it down in front of the Chief of Staff. ‘You tell him, Chief of Staff,’ he said wearily. ‘It’s all in there.’

The Chief of Staff took the file and riffled through the pages towards the back. He found what he wanted and bent the file in half. There was silence in the room while he ran his eye over three pages of typescript which Bond could see were headed with the blue and white cipher of the Colonial Office. Bond sat quietly, trying not to feel M.’s coiled impatience radiating across the desk.

The Chief of Staff slapped the file shut. He said, ‘Well, this is the story as we passed it to Strangways on January 20th. He acknowledged receipt, but after that we heard nothing from him.’ The Chief of Staff sat back in his chair. He looked at Bond. ‘It seems there’s a bird called a Roseate Spoonbill. There’s a coloured photograph of it in here. Looks like a sort of pink stork with an ugly flat bill which it uses for digging for food in the mud. Not many years ago these birds were dying out. Just before the war there were only a few hundred left in the world, mostly in Florida and thereabouts. Then somebody reported a colony of them on an island called Crab Key between Jamaica and Cuba. It’s British territory – a dependency of Jamaica. Used to be a guano island, but the quality of the guano was too low for the cost of digging it. When the birds were found there, it had been uninhabited for about fifty years. The Audubon people went there and ended up by leasing a corner as a sanctuary for these spoonbills. Put two wardens in charge and persuaded the airlines to stop flying over the island and disturbing the birds. The birds flourished and at the last count there were about five thousand of them on the island. Then came the war. The price of guano went up and some bright chap had the idea of buying the island and starting to work it again. He negotiated with the Jamaican Government and bought the place for ten thousand pounds with the condition that he didn’t disturb the lease of the sanctuary. That was in 1943. Well, this man imported plenty of cheap labour and soon had the place working at a profit and it’s gone on making a profit until recently. Then the price of guano took a dip and it’s thought that he must be having a hard time making both ends meet.’

‘Who is this man?’

‘Chinaman, or rather half Chinese and half German. Got a daft name. Calls himself Doctor No – Doctor Julius No.’

‘No? Spelt like Yes?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Any facts about him?’

‘Nothing except that he keeps very much to himself. Hasn’t been seen since he made his deal with the Jamaican Government. And there’s no traffic with the island. It’s his and he keeps it private. Says he doesn’t want people disturbing the guanay birds who turn out his guano. Seems reasonable. Well, nothing happened until just before Christmas when one of the Audubon wardens, a Barbadian, good solid chap apparently, arrived on the north shore of Jamaica in a canoe. He was very sick. He was terribly burned – died in a few days. Before he died he told some crazy story about their camp having been attacked by a dragon with flames coming out of its mouth. This dragon had killed his pal and burned up the camp and gone roaring off into the bird sanctuary belching fire among the birds and scaring them off God knows where. He had been badly burned but he’d escaped to the coast and stolen a canoe and sailed all one night to Jamaica. Poor chap was obviously off his rocker. And that was that, except that a routine report had to be sent off to the Audubon Society. And they weren’t satisfied. Sent down two of their big brass in a Beechcraft from Miami to investigate. There’s an airstrip on the island. This Chinaman’s got a Grumman Amphibian for bringing in supplies …’

M. interjected sourly, ‘All these people seem to have a hell of a lot of money to throw about on their damned birds.’

Bond and the Chief of Staff exchanged smiles. M. had been trying for years to get the Treasury to give him an Auster for the Caribbean Station.

The Chief of Staff continued: ‘And the Beechcraft crashed on landing and killed the two Audubon men. Well, that aroused these bird people to a fury. They got a corvette from the U.S. Training Squadron in the Caribbean to make a call on Doctor No. That’s how powerful these people are. Seems they’ve got quite a lobby in Washington. The captain of the corvette reported that he was received very civilly by Doctor No but was kept well away from the guano workings. He was taken to the airstrip and examined the remains of the plane. Smashed to pieces, but nothing suspicious – came in to land too fast probably. The bodies of the two men and the pilot had been reverently embalmed and packed in handsome coffins which were handed over with quite a ceremony. The captain was very impressed by Doctor No’s courtesy. He asked to see the wardens’ camp and he was taken out there and shown the remains of it. Doctor No’s theory was that the two men had gone mad because of the heat and the loneliness, or at any rate that one of them had gone mad and burned down the camp with the other inside it. This seemed possible to the captain when he’d seen what a godforsaken bit of marsh the men had been living in for ten years or more. There was nothing else to see and he was politely steered back to his ship and sailed away.’ The Chief of Staff spread his hands. ‘And that’s the lot except that the captain reported that he saw only a handful of roseate spoonbills. When his report got back to the Audubon Society it was apparently the loss of their blasted birds that infuriated these people most of all, and ever since then they’ve been nagging at us to have an inquiry into the whole business. Of course nobody at the Colonial Office or in Jamaica’s in the least interested. So in the end the whole fairy story was dumped in our lap.’ The Chief of Staff shrugged his shoulders with finality. ‘And that’s how this pile of bumf,’ he waved the file, ‘or at any rate the guts of it, got landed on Strangways.’

M. looked morosely at Bond. ‘See what I mean, 007? Just the sort of mares’ nest these old women’s societies are always stirring up. People start preserving something – churches, old houses, decaying pictures, birds – and there’s always a hullabaloo of some sort. The trouble is these sort of people get really worked up about their damned birds or whatever it is. They get the politicians involved. And somehow they all seem to have stacks of money. God knows where it comes from. Other old women, I suppose. And then there comes a point when someone has to do something to keep them quiet. Like this case. It gets shunted off on to me because the place is British territory. At the same time it’s private land. Nobody wants to interfere officially. So I’m supposed to do what? Send a submarine to the island? For what? To find out what’s happened to a covey of pink storks.’ M. snorted. ‘Anyway, you asked about Strangways’s last case and that’s it.’ M. leant forward belligerently. ‘Any questions? I’ve got a busy day ahead.’

Bond grinned. He couldn’t help it. M.’s occasional outbursts of rage were so splendid. And nothing set him going so well as any attempt to waste the time and energies and slim funds of the Secret Service. Bond got to his feet. ‘Perhaps if I could have the file, sir,’ he said placatingly. ‘It just strikes me that four people seem to have died more or less because of these birds. Perhaps two more did – Strangways and the Trueblood girl. I agree it sounds ridiculous, but we’ve got nothing else to go on.’

‘Take it, take it,’ said M. impatiently. ‘And hurry up and get your holiday over. You may not have noticed it, but the rest of the world happens to be in a bit of a mess.’

Bond reached across and picked up the file. He also made to pick up his Beretta and the holster. ‘No,’ said M. sharply. ‘Leave that. And mind you’ve got the hang of the other two guns by the time I see you again.’

Bond looked across into M.’s eyes. For the first time in his life he hated the man. He knew perfectly well why M. was being tough and mean. It was deferred punishment for having nearly got killed on his last job. Plus getting away from this filthy weather into the sunshine. M. couldn’t bear his men to have an easy time. In a way Bond felt sure he was being sent on this cushy assignment to humiliate him. The old bastard.

With the anger balling up inside him like cats’ fur, Bond said, ‘I’ll see to it, sir,’ and turned and walked out of the room.