The James Bond Anthology

3 | A VISITING CARD

And now it was ten days later and the talk with Dexter and Leiter had not added much, reflected Bond as he awoke slowly and luxuriously in his bedroom at the St Regis the morning after his arrival in New York.

Dexter had had plenty of detail on Mr Big, but nothing that threw any new light on the case. Mr Big was forty-five years old, born in Haiti, half negro and half French. Because of the initial letters of his fanciful name, Buonaparte Ignace Gallia, and because of his huge height and bulk, he came to be called, even as a youth, ‘Big Boy’ or just ‘Big’. Later this became ‘The Big Man’ or ‘Mr Big’, and his real names lingered only on a parish register in Haiti and on his dossier with the F.B.I. He had no known vices except women, whom he consumed in quantities. He didn’t drink or smoke and his only Achilles heel appeared to be a chronic heart disease which had, in recent years, imparted a greyish tinge to his skin.

The Big Boy had been initiated into Voodoo as a child, earned his living as a truck-driver in Port au Prince, then emigrated to America and worked successfully for a hijacking team in the Legs Diamond gang. With the end of Prohibition he had moved to Harlem and bought half-shares in a small nightclub and a string of coloured call-girls. His partner was found in a barrel of cement in the Harlem River in 1938 and Mr Big automatically became sole proprietor of the business. He was called up in 1943 and, because of his excellent French, came to the notice of the Office of Strategic Services, the wartime secret service of America, who trained him with great thoroughness and put him into Marseilles as an agent against the Pétain collaborationists. He merged easily with African negro dock-hands, and worked well, providing good and accurate naval intelligence. He operated closely with a Soviet spy who was doing a similar job for the Russians. At the end of the war he was demobilized in France (and decorated by the Americans and the French) and then he disappeared for five years, probably to Moscow. He returned to Harlem in 1950 and soon came to the notice of the F.B.I. as a suspected Soviet agent. But he never incriminated himself or fell into any of the traps laid by the F.B.I. He bought up three nightclubs and a prosperous chain of Harlem brothels. He seemed to have unlimited funds and paid all his lieutenants a flat rate of twenty thousand dollars a year. Accordingly, and as a result of weeding by murder, he was expertly and diligently served. He was known to have originated an underground Voodoo temple in Harlem and to have established a link between it and the main cult in Haiti. The rumour had started that he was the Zombie or living corpse of Baron Samedi himself, the dreaded Prince of Darkness, and he fostered the story so that now it was accepted through all the lower strata of the negro world. As a result, he commanded real fear, strongly substantiated by the immediate and often mysterious deaths of anyone who crossed him or disobeyed his orders.

Bond had questioned Dexter and Leiter very closely on the evidence connecting the giant negro with SMERSH. It certainly seemed conclusive.

In 1951, by the promise of one million dollars in gold and a safe refuge after six months’ work for them, the F.B.I. had at last persuaded a known Soviet agent of the M.W.D. to turn double. All went well for a month and the results exceeded the highest expectations. The Russian spy held the appointment of an economic expert on the Soviet delegation to the United Nations. One Saturday, he had gone to take the subway to Pennsylvania Station en route for the Soviet week-end rest camp at Glen Cove, the former Morgan estate on Long Island.

A huge negro, positively identified from photographs as The Big Man, had stood beside him on the platform as the train came in and was seen walking towards the exit even before the first coach had come to a standstill over the bloody vestiges of the Russian. He had not been seen to push the man, but in the crowd it would not have been difficult. Spectators said it could not have been suicide. The man screamed horribly as he fell and he had had (melancholy touch!) a bag of golf clubs over his shoulder. The Big Man, of course, had had an alibi as solid as Fort Knox. He had been held and questioned, but was quickly sprung by the best lawyer in Harlem.

The evidence was good enough for Bond. He was just the man for SMERSH, with just the training. A real, hard weapon of fear and death. And what a brilliant set-up for dealing with the smaller fry of the negro underworld and for keeping a coloured information network well up to the mark! – the fear of Voodoo and the supernatural, still deeply, primevally ingrained in the negro subconscious! And what genius to have, as a beginning, the whole transport system of America under surveillance, the trains, the porters, the truck-drivers, the stevedores! To have at his disposal a host of key men who would have no idea that the questions they answered had been asked by Russia. Small-time professional men who, if they thought at all, would guess that the information on freights and schedules was being sold to rival transport concerns.

Not for the first time, Bond felt his spine crawl at the cold, brilliant efficiency of the Soviet machine, and at the fear of death and torture which made it work and of which the supreme engine was SMERSH – SMERSH, the very whisper of death.

Now, in his bedroom at the St Regis, Bond shook away his thoughts and jumped impatiently out of bed. Well, there was one of them at hand, ready for the crushing. At Royale he had only caught a glimpse of his man. This time it would be face to face. Big Man? Then let it be a giant, a homeric slaying.

Bond walked over to the window and pulled back the curtains. His room faced north, towards Harlem. Bond gazed for a moment towards the northern horizon, where another man would be in his bedroom asleep, or perhaps awake and thinking conceivably of him, Bond, whom he had seen with Dexter on the steps of the hotel. Bond looked at the beautiful day and smiled. And no man, not even Mr Big, would have liked the expression on his face.

Bond shrugged his shoulders and walked quickly to the telephone.

‘St Regis Hotel. Good morning,’ said a voice.

‘Room Service, please,’ said Bond.

‘Room Service? I’d like to order breakfast. Half a pint of orange juice, three eggs, lightly scrambled, with bacon, a double portion of café Espresso with cream. Toast. Marmalade. Got it?’

The order was repeated back to him. Bond walked out into the lobby and picked up the five pounds’ weight of newspapers which had been placed quietly inside the door earlier in the morning. There was also a pile of parcels on the hall table which Bond disregarded.

The afternoon before he had had to submit to a certain degree of Americanization at the hands of the F.B.I. A tailor had come and measured him for two single-breasted suits in dark blue light-weight worsted (Bond had firmly refused anything more dashing) and a haberdasher had brought chilly white nylon shirts with long points to the collars. He had had to accept half a dozen unusually patterned foulard ties, dark socks with fancy clocks, two or three ‘display kerchiefs’ for his breast pocket, nylon vests and pants (called T-shirts and shorts), a comfortable light-weight camel-hair overcoat with over-buttressed shoulders, a plain grey snap-brim Fedora with a thin black ribbon and two pairs of hand-stitched and very comfortable black Moccasin ‘casuals’.

He also acquired a ‘Swank’ tie-clip in the shape of a whip, an alligator-skin billfold from Mark Cross, a plain Zippo lighter, a plastic ‘Travel-Pak’ containing razor, hairbrush and toothbrush, a pair of horn-rimmed glasses with plain lenses, various other oddments and, finally, a light-weight Hartmann ‘Skymate’ suitcase to contain all these things.

He was allowed to retain his own Beretta .25 with the skeleton grip and the chamois leather shoulder-holster, but all his other possessions were to be collected at midday and forwarded down to Jamaica to await him.

He was given a military haircut and was told that he was a New Englander from Boston and that he was on holiday from his job with the London office of the Guaranty Trust Company. He was reminded to ask for the ‘check’ rather than the ‘bill’, to say ‘cab’ instead of ‘taxi’ and (this from Leiter) to avoid words of more than two syllables. (‘You can get through any American conversation,’ advised Leiter, ‘with “Yeah”, “Nope” and “Sure”.’) The English word to be avoided at all costs, added Leiter, was ‘Ectually’. Bond had said that this word was not part of his vocabulary.

Bond looked grimly at the pile of parcels which contained his new identity, stripped off his pyjamas for the last time (‘We mostly sleep in the raw in America, Mr Bond’) and gave himself a sizzling cold shower. As he shaved he examined his face in the glass. The thick comma of black hair above his right eyebrow had lost some of its tail and his hair was trimmed close across the temples. Nothing could be done about the thin vertical scar down his right cheek, although the F.B.I. had experimented with ‘Cover-Mark’, or about the coldness and hint of anger in his grey-blue eyes, but there was the mixed blood of America in the black hair and high cheekbones and Bond thought he might get by – except, perhaps, with women.

Naked, Bond walked out into the lobby and tore open some of the packages. Later, in white shirt and dark blue trousers, he went into the sitting-room, pulled a chair up to the writing-desk near the window and opened The Travellers Tree, by Patrick Leigh Fermor.

This extraordinary book had been recommended to him by M.

‘It’s by a chap who knows what he’s talking about,’ he said, ‘and don’t forget that he was writing about what was happening in Haiti in 1950. This isn’t medieval black-magic stuff. It’s being practised every day.’

Bond was half way through the section on Haiti.

The next step [he read] is the invocation of evil denizens of the Voodoo pantheon – such as Don Pedro, Kitta, Mondongue, Bakalou and Zandor – for harmful purposes, for the reputed practice (which is of Congolese origin) of turning people into zombies in order to use them as slaves, the casting of maleficent spells, and the destruction of enemies. The effects of the spell, of which the outward form may be an image of the intended victim, a miniature coffin or a toad, are frequently stiffened by the separate use of poison. Father Cosme enlarged on the superstitions that maintain that men with certain powers change themselves into snakes; on the ‘Loups-Garoups’ that fly at night in the form of vampire bats and suck the blood of children; on men who reduce themselves to infinitesimal size and roll about the countryside in calabashes. What sounded far more sinister were a number of mystico-criminal secret societies of wizards, with nightmarish titles – ‘les Mackanda’, named after the poison campaign of the Haitian hero; ‘les Zobop’, who were also robbers; the ‘Mazanxa’, the ‘Caporelata’ and the ‘Vlinbindingue’. These, he said, were the mysterious groups whose gods demand – instead of a cock, a pigeon, a goat, a dog, or a pig, as in the normal rites of Voodoo – the sacrifice of a ‘cabrit sans cornes’. This hornless goat, of course, means a human being …

Bond turned over the pages, occasional passages combining to form an extraordinary picture in his mind of a dark religion and its terrible rites.

… Slowly, out of the turmoil and the smoke and the shattering noise of the drums, which, for a time, drove everything except their impact from the mind, the details began to detach themselves …

… Backwards and forwards, very slowly, the dancers shuffled, and at each step their chins shot out and their buttocks jerked upwards, while their shoulders shook in double time. Their eyes were half closed and from their mouths came again and again the same incomprehensible words, the same short line of chanted song, repeated after each iteration, half an octave lower. At a change in the beat of the drums, they straightened their bodies, and flinging their arms in the air while their eyes rolled upwards, spun round and round …

… At the edge of the crowd we came upon a little hut, scarcely larger than a dog kennel: ‘Le caye Zombi’. The beam of a torch revealed a black cross inside and some rags and chains and shackles and whips: adjuncts used at the Ghédé ceremonies, which Haitian ethnologists connect with the rejuvenation rites of Osiris recorded in the Book of the Dead. A fire was burning, in which two sabres and a large pair of pincers were standing, their lower parts red with the heat: ‘le Feu Marinette’, dedicated to a goddess who is the evil obverse of the bland and amorous Maitresse Erzulie Fréda Dahomin, the Goddess of Love.

Beyond, with its base held fast in a socket of stone, stood a large black wooden cross. A white death’s head was painted near the base, and over the crossbar were pulled the sleeves of a very old morning coat. Here also rested the brim of a battered bowler hat, through the torn crown of which the top of the cross projected. This totem, with which every peristyle must be equipped, is not a lampoon of the central event of the Christian faith, but represents the God of the Cemeteries and the Chief of the Legion of the Dead, Baron Samedi. The Baron is paramount in all matters immediately beyond the tomb. He is Cerberus and Charon as well as Aeacus, Rhadamanthus and Pluto …

… The drums changed and the Houngenikon came dancing on to the floor, holding a vessel filled with some burning liquid from which sprang blue and yellow flames. As he circled the pillar and spilt three flaming libations, his steps began to falter. Then, lurching backwards with the same symptoms of delirium that had manifested themselves in his forerunner, he flung down the whole blazing mass. The houncis caught him as he reeled, and removed his sandals and rolled his trousers up, while the kerchief fell from his head and laid bare his young woolly skull. The other houncis knelt to put their hands in the flaming mud, and rub it over their hands and elbows and faces. The Houngan’s bell and ‘açon’ rattled officiously and the young priest was left by himself, reeling and colliding against the pillar, helplessly catapulting across the floor, and falling among the drums. His eyes were shut, his forehead screwed up and his chin hung loose. Then, as though an invisible fist had dealt him a heavy blow, he fell to the ground and lay there, with his head stretching backwards in a rictus of anguish until the tendons of his neck and shoulders projected like roots. One hand clutched at the other elbow behind his hollowed back as though he were striving to break his own arm, and his whole body, from which the sweat was streaming, trembled and shuddered like a dog in a dream. Only the whites of his eyes were visible as, although his eye-sockets were now wide open, the pupils had vanished under the lids. Foam collected on his lips …

… Now the Houngan, dancing a slow step and brandishing a cutlass, advanced from the fireside, flinging the weapon again and again into the air, and catching it by the hilt. In a few minutes he was holding it by the blunted end of the blade. Dancing slowly towards him, the Houngenikon reached out and grasped the hilt. The priest retired, and the young man, twirling and leaping, spun from side to side of the ‘tonnelle’. The ring of spectators rocked backwards as he bore down upon them whirling the blade over his head, with the gaps in his bared teeth lending to his mandril face a still more feral aspect. The ‘tonnelle’ was filled for a few seconds with genuine and unmitigated terror. The singing had turned to a universal howl and the drummers, rolling and lolling with the furious and invisible motion of their hands, were lost in a transport of noise.

Flinging back his head, the novice drove the blunt end of the cutlass into his stomach. His knees sagged, and his head fell forward …

There came a knock on the door and a waiter came in with breakfast. Bond was glad to put the dreadful tale aside and re-enter the world of normality. But it took him minutes to forget the atmosphere, heavy with terror and the occult, that had surrounded him as he read.

With breakfast came another parcel, about a foot square, expensive-looking, which Bond told the waiter to put on the sideboard. Some afterthought of Leiter’s, he supposed. He ate his breakfast with enjoyment. Between mouthfuls he looked out of the wide window and reflected on what he had just read.

It was only when he had swallowed his last mouthful of coffee and had lit his first cigarette of the day that he suddenly became aware of the tiny noise in the room behind him.

It was a soft, muffled ticking, unhurried, metallic. And it came from the direction of the sideboard.

‘Tick-tock … tick-tock … tick-tock.’

Without a moment’s hesitation, without caring that he looked a fool, he dived to the floor behind his armchair and crouched, all his senses focused on the noise from the square parcel. ‘Steady,’ he said to himself. ‘Don’t be an idiot. It’s just a clock.’ But why a clock? Why should he be given a clock? Who by?

‘Tick-tock … tick-tock … tick-tock.’

It had become a huge noise against the silence of the room. It seemed to be keeping time with the thumping of Bond’s heart. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. That Voodoo stuff of Leigh Fermor’s has put your nerves on edge. Those drums …’

‘Tick-tock … tick-tock … tick – ’

And then, suddenly, the alarm went off with a deep, melodious, urgent summons.

‘Tongtongtongtongtongtong …’

Bond’s muscles relaxed. His cigarette was burning a hole in the carpet. He picked it up and put it in his mouth. Bombs in alarm clocks go off when the hammer first comes down on the alarm. The hammer hits a pin in a detonator, the detonator fires the explosive and wham …

Bond raised his head above the back of the chair and watched the parcel.

‘Tongtongtongtongtong …’

The muffled gonging went on for half a minute, then it started to slow down.

‘tong … tong … tong … tong … tong …’

‘C-R-R-R-A-C-K …’

It was not louder than a 12-bore cartridge, but in the confined space it was an impressive explosion.

The parcel, in tatters, had fallen to the ground. The glasses and bottles on the sideboard were smashed and there was a black smudge of smoke on the grey wall behind them. Some pieces of glass tinkled on to the floor. There was a strong smell of gunpowder in the room.

Bond got slowly to his feet. He went to the window and opened it. Then he dialled Dexter’s number. He spoke levelly.

‘Pineapple … No, a small one … only some glasses … okay, thanks … of course not …’bye.’

He skirted the debris, walked through the small lobby to the door leading into the passage, opened it, hung the DON’T DISTURB sign outside, locked it, and went through into his bedroom.

By the time he had finished dressing there was a knock on the door.

‘Who is it?’ he called.

‘Okay. Dexter.’

Dexter hustled in, followed by a sallow young man with a black box under his arm.

‘Trippe, from Sabotage,’ announced Dexter.

They shook hands and the young man at once went on his knees beside the charred remnants of the parcel.

He opened his box and took out some rubber gloves and a handful of dentist’s forceps. With his tools he painstakingly extracted small bits of metal and glass from the charred parcel and laid them out on a broad sheet of blotting paper from the writing desk.

While he worked, he asked Bond what had happened.

‘About a half-minute alarm? I see. Hullo, what’s this?’ He delicately extracted a small aluminium container such as is used for exposed film. He put it aside.

After a few minutes he sat up on his haunches.

‘Half-minute acid capsule,’ he announced. ‘Broken by the first hammer-stroke of the alarm. Acid eats through thin copper wire. Thirty seconds later wire breaks, releases plunger on to cap of this.’ He held up the base of a cartridge. ‘4-bore elephant gun. Black powder. Blank. No shot. Lucky it wasn’t a grenade. Plenty of room in the parcel. You’d have been damaged. Now let’s have a look at this.’ He picked up the aluminium cylinder, unscrewed it, extracted a small roll of paper, and unravelled it with his forceps.

He carefully flattened it out on the carpet, holding its corners down with four tools from his black box. It contained three typewritten sentences. Bond and Dexter bent forward.

‘THE HEART OF THIS CLOCK HAS STOPPED TICKING,’ they read. ‘THE BEATS OF YOUR OWN HEART ARE NUMBERED. I KNOW THAT NUMBER AND I HAVE STARTED TO COUNT.’

The message was signed ‘1234567 …?’

They stood up.

‘Hm,’ said Bond. ‘Bogeyman stuff.’

‘But how the hell did he know you were here?’ asked Dexter.

Bond told him of the black sedan on 55th Street.

‘But the point is,’ said Bond, ‘how did he know what I was here for? Shows he’s got Washington pretty well sewn up. Must be a leak the size of the Grand Canyon somewhere.’

‘Why should it be Washington?’ asked Dexter testily. ‘Anyway,’ he controlled himself with a forced laugh, ‘Hell and damnation. Have to make a report to Headquarters on this. So long, Mr Bond. Glad you came to no harm.’

‘Thanks,’ said Bond. ‘It was just a visiting card. I must return the compliment.’