To Ernest Cunéo-Muse
The story is based on a screen treatment by K. McClory, J. Whittingham, and the author.
1. «Take It Easy, Mr. Bond»
It was one of those days when it seemed to James Bond that all life, as someone put it, was nothing but a heap of six to four against.
To begin with he was ashamed of himself–a rare state of mind. He had a hangover, a bad one, with an aching head and stiff joints. When he coughed–smoking too much goes with drinking too much and doubles the hangover–a cloud of small luminous black spots swam across his vision like amoebae in pond water. The one drink too many signals itself unmistakably. His final whisky and soda in the luxurious flat in Park Lane had been no different from the ten preceding ones, but it had gone down reluctantly and had left a bitter taste and an ugly sensation of surfeit. And, although he had taken in the message, he had agreed to play just one more rubber. Five pounds a hundred as it's the last one? He had agreed. And he had played the rubber like a fool. Even now he could see the queen of spades, with that stupid Mona Lisa smile on her fat face, slapping triumphantly down on his knave–the queen, as his partner had so sharply reminded him, that had been so infallibly marked with South, and that had made the difference between a grand slam redoubled (drunkenly) for him, and four hundred points above the line for the opposition. In the end it had been a twenty-point rubber, £100 against him–important money.
Again Bond dabbed with the bloodstained styptic pencil at the cut on his chin and despised the face that stared sullenly back at him from the mirror above the wash basin. Stupid, ignorant bastard! It all came from having nothing to do. More than a month of paper work–ticking off his number on stupid dockets, scribbling minutes that got spikier as the weeks passed, and snapping back down the telephone when some harmless section officer tried to argue with him. And then his secretary had gone down with the flu and he had been given a silly, and, worse, ugly bitch from the pool who called him «sir» and spoke to him primly through a mouth full of fruit stones. And now it was another Monday morning. Another week was beginning. The May rain thrashed at the windows. Bond swallowed down two Phensics and reached for the Eno's. The telephone in his bedroom rang. It was the loud ring of the direct line with Headquarters.
James Bond, his heart thumping faster than it should have done, despite the race across London and a fretful wait for the lift to the eighth floor, pulled out the chair and sat down and looked across into the calm, gray, damnably clear eyes he knew so well. What could he read in them?
«Good morning, James. Sorry to pull you along a bit early in the morning. Got a very full day ahead. Wanted to fit you in before the rush.»
Bond's excitement waned minutely. It was never a good sign when M addressed him by his Christian name instead of by his number. This didn't look like a job–more like something personal. There was none of the tension in M's voice that heralded big, exciting news. M's expression was interested, friendly, almost benign. Bond said something noncommittal.
«Haven't seen much of you lately, James. How have you been? Your health, I mean.» M picked up a sheet of paper, a form of some kind, from his desk, and held it as if preparing to read.
Suspiciously, trying to guess what the paper said, what all this was about, Bond said, «I'm all right, sir.»
M said mildly, «That's not what the M.O. thinks, James. Just had your last Medical. I think you ought to hear what he has to say.»
Bond looked angrily at the back of the paper. Now what the hell! He said with control, «Just as you say, sir.»
M gave Bond a careful, appraising glance. He held the paper closer to his eyes. « `This officer,' « he read, « `remains basically physically sound. Unfortunately his mode of life is not such as is likely to allow him to remain in this happy state. Despite many previous warnings, he admits to smoking sixty cigarettes a day. These are of a Balkan mixture with a higher nicotine content than the cheaper varieties. When not engaged upon strenuous duty, the officer's average daily consumption of alcohol is in the region of half a bottle of spirits of between sixty and seventy proof. On examination, there continues to be little definite sign of deterioration. The tongue is furred. The blood pressure a little raised at 160/90. The liver is not palpable. On the other hand, when pressed, the officer admits to frequent occipital headaches and there is spasm in the trapezius muscles and so-called `fibrositis' nodules can be felt. I believe these symptoms to be due to this officer's mode of life. He is not responsive to the suggestion that over-indulgence is no remedy for the tensions inherent in his professional calling and can only result in the creation of a toxic state which could finally have the effect of reducing his fitness as an officer. I recommend that No. 007 should take it easy for two to three weeks on a more abstemious regime, when I believe he would make a complete return to his previous exceptionally high state of physical fitness.' «
M reached over and slid the report into his OUT tray. He put his hands flat down on the desk in front of him and looked sternly across at Bond. He said, «Not very satisfactory, is it, James?»
Bond tried to keep impatience out of his voice. He said, «I'm perfectly fit, sir. Everyone has occasional headaches. Most week-end golfers have fibrositis. You get it from sweating and then sitting in a draft. Aspirin and embrocation get rid of them. Nothing to it, really, sir.»
M said severely, «That's just where you're making a big mistake, James. Taking medicine only suppresses these symptoms of yours. Medicine doesn't get to the root of the trouble. It only conceals it. The result is a more highly poisoned condition which may become chronic disease. All drugs are harmful to the system. They are contrary to nature. The same applies to most of the food we eat–white bread with all the roughage removed, refined sugar with all the goodness machined out of it, pasteurized milk which has had most of the vitamins boiled away, everything overcooked and denaturized. Why»– M reached into his pocket for his notebook and consulted it–»do you know what our bread contains apart from a bit of overground flour?» M looked accusingly at Bond. «It contains large quantities of chalk, also benzol peroxide powder, chlorine gas, sal ammoniac, and alum.» M put the notebook back in his pocket. «What do you think of that?»
Bond, mystified by all this, said defensively, «I don't eat all that much bread, sir.»
«Maybe not,» said M impatiently. «But how much stoneground whole wheat do you eat? How much yoghurt? Uncooked vegetables, nuts, fresh fruit?»
Bond smiled. «Practically none at all, sir.»
«It's no laughing matter.» M tapped his forefinger on the desk for emphasis. «Mark my words. There is no way to health except the natural way. All your troubles»–Bond opened his mouth to protest, but M held up his hand–»the deep-seated toxemia revealed by your Medical, are the result of a basically unnatural way of life. Ever heard of Bircher-Brenner, for instance? Or Kneipp, Preissnitz, Rikli, Schroth, Gossman, Bilz?»
«No, sir.»
«Just so. Well, those are the men you would be wise to study. Those are the great naturopaths–the men whose teaching we have foolishly ignored. Fortunately»–M's eyes gleamed enthusiastically–»there are a number of disciples of these men practicing in England. Nature cure is not beyond our reach.»
James Bond looked curiously at M. What the hell had got into the old man? Was all this the first sign of senile decay? But M looked fitter than Bond had ever seen him. The cold gray eyes were clear as crystal and the skin of the hard, lined face was luminous with health. Even the iron-gray hair seemed to have new life. Then what was all this lunacy?
M reached for his IN tray and placed it in front of him in a preliminary gesture of dismissal. He said cheerfully, «Well, that's all, James. Miss Moneypenny has made the reservation. Two weeks will be quite enough to put you right. You won't know yourself when you come out. New man.»
Bond looked across at M, aghast. He said in a strangled voice, «Out of where, sir?»
«Place called Shrublands. Run by quite a famous man in his line–Wain, Joshua Wain. Remarkable chap. Sixty-five. Doesn't look a day over forty. He'll take good care of you. Very up-to-date equipment, and he's even got his own herb garden. Nice stretch of country. Near Washington in Sussex. And don't worry about your work here. Put it right out of your mind for a couple of weeks. I'll tell 009 to take care of the Section.»
Bond couldn't believe his ears. He said, «But, sir. I mean, I'm perfectly all right. Are you sure? I mean, is this really necessary?»
«No.» M smiled frostily. «Not necessary. Essential. If you want to stay in the double-O Section, that is. I can't afford to have an officer in that section who isn't one-hundred-per-cent fit.» M lowered his eyes to the basket in front of him and took out a signal file. «That's all, 007.» He didn't look up. The tone of voice was final.
Bond got to his feet. He said nothing. He walked across the room and let himself out, closing the door with exaggerated softness. Outside, Miss Moneypenny looked sweetly up at him. Bond walked over to her desk and banged his fist down so that the typewriter jumped. He said furiously, «Now what the hell, Penny?
Has the old man gone off his rocker? What's all this bloody nonsense? I'm damned if I'm going. He's absolutely nuts.»
Miss Moneypenny smiled happily. «The manager's been terribly helpful and kind. He says he can give you the Myrtle room, in the annex. He says it's a lovely room. It looks right over the herb garden. They've got their own herb garden, you know.»
«I know all about their bloody herb garden. Now look here, Penny,» Bond pleaded with her, «be a good girl and tell me what it's all about. What's eating him?»
Miss Moneypenny, who often dreamed hopelessly about Bond, took pity on him. She lowered her voice conspiratorially. «As a matter of fact, I think it's only a passing phase. But it is rather bad luck on you getting caught up in it before it's passed. You know he's always apt to get bees in his bonnet about the efficiency of the Service. There was the time when all of us had to go through that physical-exercise course. Then he had that head-shrinker in, the psychoanalyst man–you missed that. You were somewhere abroad. All the Heads of Section had to tell him their dreams. He didn't last long. Some of their dreams must have scared him off or something. Well, last month M got lumbago and some friend of his at Blades, one of the fat, drinking ones I suppose»–Miss Moneypenny turned down her desirable mouth–»told him about this place in the country. This man swore by it. Told M that we were all like motor cars and that all we needed from time to time was to go to a garage and get decarbonized. He said he went there every year. He said it only cost twenty guineas a week, which was less than what he spent in Blades in one day, and it made him feel wonderful. Well, you know M always likes trying new things, and he went there for ten days and came back absolutely sold on the place. Yesterday he gave me a great talking-to all about it and this morning in the post I got a whole lot of tins of treacle and wheat germ and heaven knows what all. I don't know what to do with the stuff. I'm afraid my poor poodle'll have to live on it. Anyway, that's what's happened and I must say I've never seen him in such wonderful form. He's absolutely rejuvenated.»
«He looked like that blasted man in the old Kruschen Salts advertisements. But why does he pick on me to go to this nuthouse?»
Miss Moneypenny gave a secret smile. «You know he thinks the world of you–or perhaps you don't. Anyway, as soon as he saw your Medical he told me to book you in.» Miss Moneypenny screwed up her nose. «But, James, do you really drink and smoke as much as that? It can't be good for you, you know.» She looked up at him with motherly eyes.
Bond controlled himself. He summoned a desperate effort at nonchalance, at the throw-away phrase. «It's just that I'd rather die of drink than of thirst. As for the cigarettes, it's really only that I don't know what to do with my hands.» He heard the stale, hangover words fall like clinker in a dead grate. Cut out the schmaltz! What you need is a double brandy and soda.
Miss Moneypenny's warm lips pursed into a disapproving line. «About the hands–that's not what I've heard.»
«Now don't you start on me, Penny.» Bond walked angrily toward the door. He turned round. «Any more ticking-off from you and when I get out of this place I'll give you such a spanking you'll have to do your typing off a block of Dunlopillo.»
Miss Moneypenny smiled sweetly at him. «I don't think you'll be able to do much spanking after living on nuts and lemon juice for two weeks, James.»
Bond made a noise between a grunt and a snarl and stormed out of the room.
2. Shrublands
James Bond slung his suitcase into the back of the old chocolate-brown Austin taxi and climbed into the front seat beside the foxy, pimpled young man in the black leather windcheater. The young man took a comb out of his breast pocket, ran it carefully through both sides of his duck-tail haircut, put the comb back in his pocket, then leaned forward and pressed the self-starter. The play with the comb, Bond guessed, was to assert to Bond that the driver was really only taking him and his money as a favor. It was typical of the cheap self-assertiveness of young labor since the war. This youth, thought Bond, makes about twenty pounds a week, despises his parents, and would like to be Tommy Steele. It's not his fault. He was born into the buyers' market of the Welfare State and into the age of atomic bombs and space flight. For him, life is easy and meaningless. Bond said, «How far is it to Shrublands?»
The young man did an expert but unnecessary racing change round an island and changed up again. « 'Bout half an hour.» He put his foot down on the accelerator and neatly but rather dangerously overtook a lorry at an intersection.
«You certainly get the most out of your Bluebird.»
The young man glanced sideways to see if he was being laughed at. He decided that he wasn't. He unbent fractionally. «My dad won't spring me something better. Says this old crate was okay for him for twenty years so it's got to be okay for me for another twenty. So I'm putting money by on my own. Halfway there already.»
Bond decided that the comb play had made him over-censorious. He said, «What are you going to get?»
«Volkswagen Minibus. Do the Brighton races.»
«That sounds a good idea. Plenty of money in Brighton.»
«I'll say.» The young man showed a trace of enthusiasm. «Only time I ever got there, a couple of bookies had me take them and a couple of tarts to London. Ten quid and a fiver tip. Piece of cake.»
«Certainly was. But you can get both kinds at Brighton. You want to watch out for being mugged and rolled. There are some tough gangs operating out of Brighton. What's happened to The Bucket of Blood these days?»
«Never opened up again after that case they had. The one that got in all the papers.» The young man realized that he was talking as if to an equal. He glanced sideways and looked Bond up and down with a new interest. «You going into the Scrubs or just visiting?»
«Scrubs?»
«Shrublands–Wormwood Scrubs–Scrubs,» said the young man laconically. «You're not like the usual ones I get to take there. Mostly fat women and old geezers who tell me not to drive so fast or it'll shake up their sciatica or something.»
Bond laughed. «I've got fourteen days without the option. Doctor thinks it'll do me good. Got to take it easy. What do they think of the place round here?»
The young man took the turning off the Brighton road and drove westward under the Downs through Poynings and Fulking. The Austin whined stolidly through the inoffensive countryside. «People think they're a lot of crackpots. Don't care for the place. All those rich folk and they don't spend any money in the area. Tearooms make a bit out of them–specially out of the cheats.» He looked at Bond. «You'd be surprised. Grown people, some of them pretty big shots in the City and so forth, and they motor around in their Bentleys with their bellies empty and they see a tea shop and go in just for their cups of tea. That's all they're allowed. Next thing, they see some guy eating buttered toast and sugar cakes at the next table and they can't stand it. They order mounds of the stuff and hog it down just like kids who've broken into the larder–looking round all the time to see if they've been spotted. You'd think people like that would be ashamed of themselves.»
«Seems a bit silly when they're paying plenty to take the cure or whatever it is.»
«And that's another thing.» The young man's voice was indignant. «I can understand charging twenty quid a week and giving you three square meals a day, but how do they get away with charging twenty quid for giving you nothing but hot water to eat? Doesn't make sense.» «I suppose there are the treatments. And it must be worth it to the people if they get well.»
«Guess so,» said the young man doubtfully. «Some of them do look a bit different when I come to take them back to the station.» He sniggered. «And some of them change into real old goats after a week of nuts and so forth. Guess I might try it myself one day.» «What do you mean?»
The young man glanced at Bond. Reassured and remembering Bond's worldly comments on Brighton, he said, «Well, you see we got a girl here in Washington. Racy bird. Sort of local tart, if you see what I mean. Waitress at a place called The Honey Bee Tea Shop– or was, rather. She started most of us off, if you get my meaning. Quid a go and she knows a lot of French tricks. Regular sport. Well, this year the word got round up at the Scrubs and some of these old goats began patronizing Polly–Polly Grace, that's her name. Took her out in their Bentleys and gave her a roll in a deserted quarry up on the Downs. That's been her pitch for years. Trouble was they paid her five, ten quid and she soon got too good for the likes of us. Priced her out of our market, so to speak. Inflation, sort of. And a month ago she chucked up her job at The Honey Bee, and you know what?» The young man's voice was loud with indignation. «She bought herself a beat-up Austin Metropolitan for a couple of hundred quid and went mobile. Just like the London tarts in Curzon Street they talk about in the papers. Now she's off to Brighton, Lewes–anywhere she can find the sports, and in between whiles she goes to work in the quarry with these old goats from the Scrubs! Would you believe it!» The young man gave an angry blast on his klaxon at an inoffensive couple on a tandem bicycle.
Bond said seriously, «That's too bad. I wouldn't have thought these people would be interested in that sort of thing on nut cutlets and dandelion wine or whatever they get to eat at this place.»
The young man snorted. «That's all you know. I mean»–he felt he had been too emphatic–»that's what we all thought. One of my pals, he's the son of the local doctor, talked the thing over with his dad– in a roundabout way, sort of. And his dad said no. He said that this sort of diet and no drink and plenty of rest, what with the massage and the hot and cold sitz baths and what have you, he said that all clears the blood stream and tones up the system, if you get my meaning. Wakes the old goats up–makes 'em want to start cutting the mustard again, if you know the song by that Rosemary Clooney.»
Bond laughed. He said, «Well, well. Perhaps there's something to the place after all.»
A sign on the right of the road said: « Shrublands. Gateway to Health. First right. Silence please. « The road ran through a wide belt of firs and evergreens in a fold of the Downs. A high wall appeared and then an imposing, mock-battlemented entrance with a Victorian lodge from which a thin wisp of smoke rose straight up among the quiet trees. The young man turned in and followed a gravel sweep between thick laurel bushes. An elderly couple cringed off the drive at a blare from his klaxon and then on the right there were broad stretches of lawn and neatly flowered borders and a sprinkling of slowly moving figures, alone and in pairs, and behind them a redbrick Victorian monstrosity from which a long glass sun parlor extended to the edge of the grass.
The young man pulled up beneath a heavy portico with a crenelated roof. Beside a varnished, iron-studded arched door stood a tall glazed urn above which a notice said: « No smoking inside. Cigarettes here please. « Bond got down from the taxi and pulled his suitcase out of the back. He gave the young man a ten-shilling tip. The young man accepted it as no less than his due. He said, «Thanks. You ever want to break out, you can call me up. Polly's not the only one. And there's a tea shop on the Brighton road has buttered muffins. So long.» He banged the gears into bottom and ground off back the way he had come. Bond picked up his suitcase and walked resignedly up the steps and through the heavy door.
Inside it was very warm and quiet. At the reception desk in the big oak-paneled hall a severely pretty girl in starched white welcomed him briskly. When he had signed the register she led him through a series of somberly furnished public rooms and down a neutral-smelling white corridor to the back of the building. Here there was a communicating door with the annex, a long, low, cheaply built structure with rooms on both sides of a central passage. The doors bore the names of flowers and shrubs. She showed him into Myrtle, told him that «the Chief» would see him in an hour's time, at six o'clock, and left him. It was a room-shaped room with furniture-shaped furniture and dainty curtains. The bed was provided with an electric blanket. There was a vase containing three marigolds beside the bed and a book called Nature Cure Explained by Alan Moyle, M.N.B.A. Bond opened it and ascertained that the initials stood for «Member: British Naturopathic Association.» He turned off the central heating and opened the windows wide. The herb garden, row upon row of small nameless plants round a central sundial, smiled up at him. Bond unpacked his things and sat down in the single armchair and read about eliminating the waste products from his body. He learned a great deal about foods he had never heard of, such as Potassium Broth, Nut Mince, and the mysteriously named Unmalted Slippery Elm. He had got as far as the chapter on massage and was reflecting on the injunction that this art should be divided into Effleurage, Stroking, Friction, Kneading, Petrissage, Tapotement, and Vibration, when the telephone rang. A girl's voice said that Mr. Wain would be glad to see him in Consulting Room A in five minutes.
Mr. Joshua Wain had a firm, dry handshake and a resonant, encouraging voice. He had a lot of bushy gray hair above an unlined brow, soft, clear brown eyes, and a sincere and Christian smile. He appeared to be genuinely pleased to see Bond and to be interested in him. He wore a very clean smocklike coat with short sleeves from which strong hairy arms hung relaxed. Below were rather incongruous pin-stripe trousers. He wore sandals over socks of conservative gray and when he moved across the consulting room his stride was a springy lope.
Mr. Wain asked Bond to remove all his clothes except his shorts. When he saw the many scars he said politely, «Dear me, you do seem to have been in the wars, Mr. Bond.»
Bond said indifferently, «Near miss. During the war.»
«Really! War between peoples is a terrible thing. Now, just breathe in deeply, please.» Mr. Wain listened at Bond's back and chest, took his blood pressure, weighed him and recorded his height, and then, after asking him to lie face down on a surgical couch, handled his joints and vertebrae with soft, probing fingers.
While Bond replaced his clothes, Mr. Wain wrote busily at his desk. Then he sat back. «Well, Mr. Bond, nothing much to worry about here, I think. Blood pressure a little high, slight osteopathic lesions in the upper vertebrae–they'll probably be causing your tension headaches, by the way–and some right sacroiliac strain with the right ilium slightly displaced backwards. Due to a bad fall some time, no doubt.» Mr. Wain raised his eyebrows for confirmation.
Bond said, «Perhaps.» Inwardly he reflected that the «bad fall» had probably been when he had had to jump from the Arlberg Express after Heinkel and his friends had caught up with him around the time of the Hungarian uprising in 1956.
«Well, now.» Mr. Wain drew a printed form toward him and thoughtfully ticked off items on a list. «Strict dieting for one week to eliminate the toxins in the blood stream. Massage to tone you up, irrigation, hot and cold sitz baths, osteopathic treatment, and a short course of traction to get rid of the lesions. That should put you right. And complete rest, of course. Just take it easy, Mr. Bond. You're a civil servant, I understand. Do you good to get away from all that worrying paper work for a while.» Mr. Wain got up and handed the printed form to Bond. «Treatment rooms in half an hour, Mr. Bond. No harm in starting right away.»
«Thank you.» Bond took the form and glanced at it. «What's traction, by the way?»
«A mechanical device for stretching the spine. Very beneficial.» Mr. Wain smiled indulgently. «Don't be worried by what some of the other patients tell you about it. They call it `The Rack.' You know what wags some people are.»
«Yes.»
Bond walked out and along the white-painted corridor. People were sitting about, reading or talking in soft tones in the public rooms. They were all elderly, middle-class people, mostly women, many of whom wore unattractive quilted dressing gowns. The warm, close air and the frumpish women gave Bond claustrophobia. He walked through the hall to the main door and let himself out into the wonderful fresh air.
Bond walked thoughtfully down the trim narrow drive and smelled the musty smell of the laurels and the laburnums. Could he stand it? Was there any way out of this hell-hole short of resigning from the Service? Deep in thought, he almost collided with a girl in white who came hurrying round a sharp bend in the thickly hedged drive. At the same instant as she swerved out of his path and flashed him an amused smile, a mauve Bentley, taking the corner too fast, was on top of her. At one moment she was almost under its wheels, at the next, Bond, with one swift step, had gathered her up by the waist and, executing a passable Veronica, with a sharp swivel of his hips had picked her body literally off the hood of the car. He put the girl down as the Bentley dry-skidded to a stop in the gravel. His right hand held the memory of one beautiful breast. The girl said, «Oh!» and looked up into his eyes with an expression of flurried astonishment. Then she took in what had happened and said breathlessly, «Oh, thank you.» She turned toward the car.
A man had climbed unhurriedly down from the driving seat. He said calmly, «I am so sorry. Are you all right?» Recognition dawned on his face. He said silkily, «Why, if it isn't my friend Patricia. How are you, Pat? All ready for me?»
The man was extremely handsome–a dark-bronzed woman-killer with a neat mustache above the sort of callous mouth women kiss in their dreams. He had regular features that suggested Spanish or South American blood and bold, hard brown eyes that turned up oddly, or, as a woman would put it, intriguingly, at the corners. He was an athletic-looking six foot, dressed in the sort of casually well-cut beige herring-bone tweed that suggests Anderson and Sheppard. He wore a white silk shirt and a dark red polka-dot tie, and the soft dark brown V-necked sweater looked like vicuna. Bond summed him up as a good-looking bastard who got all the women he wanted and probably lived on them–and lived well.
The girl had recovered her poise. She said severely, «You really ought to be more careful, Count Lippe. You know there are always patients and staff walking down this drive. If it hadn't been for this gentleman»–she smiled at Bond–»you'd have run me over. After all, there is a big sign asking drivers to take care.»
«I am so sorry, my dear. I was hurrying. I am late for my appointment with the good Mr. Wain. I am as usual in need of decarbonization–this time after two weeks in Paris.» He turned to Bond. He said with a hint of condescension, «Thank you, my dear sir. You have quick reactions. And now, if you will forgive me–» He raised a hand, got back into the Bentley, and purred off up the drive.
The girl said, «Now I really must hurry. I'm terribly late.» Together they turned and walked after the Bentley.
Bond said, examining her, «Do you work here?» She said that she did. She had been at Shrublands for three years. She liked it. And how long was he staying? The small-talk continued.
She was an athletic-looking girl whom Bond would have casually associated with tennis, or skating, or show-jumping. She had the sort of firm, compact figure that always attracted him and a fresh open-air type of prettiness that would have been commonplace but for a wide, rather passionate mouth and a hint of authority that would be a challenge to men. She was dressed in a feminine version of the white smock worn by Mr. Wain, and it was clear from the undisguised curves of her breasts and hips that she had little on underneath it. Bond asked her if she didn't get bored. What did she do with her time off?
She acknowledged the gambit with a smile and a quick glance of appraisal. «I've got one of those bubble cars. I get about the country quite a lot. And there are wonderful walks. And one's always seeing new people here. Some of them are very interesting. That man in the car, Count Lippe. He comes here every year. He tells me fascinating things about the Far East–China and so on. He's got some sort of a business in a place called Macao. It's near Hong Kong, isn't it?»
«Yes, that's right.» So those turned-up eyes were a dash of Chinaman. It would be interesting to know his background. Probably Portuguese blood if he came from Macao.
They had reached the entrance. Inside the warm hall the girl said, «Well, I must run. Thank you again.» She gave him a smile that, for the benefit of the watching receptionist, was entirely neutral. «I hope you enjoy your stay.» She hurried off toward the treatment rooms. Bond followed, his eyes on the taut swell of her hips. He glanced at his watch and also went down the stairs and into a spotlessly white basement that smelled faintly of olive oil and an Aerosol disinfectant.
Beyond a door marked « Gentlemen's Treatment « he was taken in hand by an indiarubbery masseur in trousers and singlet. Bond undressed and with a towel round his waist followed the man down a long room divided into compartments by plastic curtains. In the first compartment, side by side, two elderly men lay, the perspiration pouring down their strawberry faces, in electric blanket-baths. In the next were two massage tables. On one, the pale, dimpled body of a youngish but very fat man wobbled obscenely beneath the pummeling of his masseur. Bond, his mind recoiling from it all, took off his towel and lay down on his face and surrendered himself to the toughest deep massage he had ever experienced.
Vaguely, against the jangling of his nerves and the aching of muscles and tendons, he heard the fat man heave himself off his table and, moments later, another patient take his place. He heard the man's masseur say, «I'm afraid we'll have to have the wristwatch off, sir.» The urbane, silky voice that Bond at once recognized said with authority, «Nonsense, my dear fellow. I come here every year and I've been allowed to keep it on before. I'd rather keep it on, if you don't mind.»
«Sorry, sir.» The masseur's voice was politely firm. «You must have had someone else doing the treatment. It interferes with the flow of blood when I come to treat the arm and hand. If you don't mind, sir.»
There was a moment's silence. Bond could almost feel Count Lippe controlling his temper. The words, when they came, were spat out with what seemed to Bond ludicrous violence. «Take it off then.» The «Damn you» didn't have to be uttered. It hung in the air at the end of the sentence.
«Thank you, sir.» There was a brief pause and then the massage began.
The small incident seemed odd to Bond. Obviously one had to take off one's wristwatch for a massage. Why had the man wanted to keep it on? It seemed very childish.
«Turn over, please, sir.»
Bond obeyed. Now his face was free to move. He glanced casually to his right. Count Lippe's face was turned away from him. His left arm hung down toward the floor. Where the sunburn ended, there was a bracelet of almost white flesh at the wrist. In the middle of the circle where the watch had been there was a sign tattooed on the skin. It looked like a small zigzag crossed by two vertical strokes. So Count Lippe had not wanted this sign to be seen! It would be amusing to ring up Records and see if they had a line on what sort of people wore this little secret recognition sign under their wristwatches.
3. The Rack
At the end of the hour's treatment Bond felt as if his body had been eviscerated and then run through a wringer. He put on his clothes and, cursing M, climbed weakly back up the stairs into what, by comparison with the world of nakedness and indignities in the basement, were civilized surroundings. At the entrance to the main lounge were two telephone booths. The switchboard put him through to the only Headquarters number he was allowed to call on an outside line. He knew that all such outside calls were monitored. As he asked for Records, he recognized the hollowness on the line that meant the line was bugged. He gave him number to Head of Records and put his question, adding that the subject was an Oriental probably of Portuguese extraction. After ten minutes Head of Records came back to him.
«It's a Tong sign.» His voice sounded interested. «The Red Lightning Tong. Unusual to find anyone but a full-blooded Chinaman being a member. It's not the usual semi-religious organization. This is entirely criminal. Station H had dealings with it once. They're represented in Hong Kong, but their headquarters are across the bay in Macao. Station H paid big money to get a courier service running into Peking. Worked like a dream, so they gave the line a trial with some heavy stuff. It bounced, badly. Lost a couple of H's top men. It was a double-cross. Turned out that Redland had some sort of a deal with these people. Hell of a mess. Since then they've cropped up from time to time in drugs, gold smuggling to India, and top-bracket white slavery. They're big people. We'd be interested if you've got any kind of a line.»
Bond said, «Thanks, Records. No, I've got nothing definite. First time I've heard of these Red Lightning people. Let you know if anything develops. So long.»
Bond thoughtfully put back the receiver. How interesting! Now what the hell could this man be doing at Shrublands? Bond walked out of the booth. A movement in the next booth caught his eye. Count Lippe, his back to Bond, had just picked up the receiver. How long had he been in there? Had he heard Bond's inquiry? Or his comment? Bond had the crawling sensation at the pit of his stomach he knew so well–the signal that he had probably made a dangerous and silly mistake. He glanced at his watch. It was seven-thirty. He walked through the lounge to the sun parlor where «dinner» was being served. He gave his name to the elderly woman with a wardress face behind a long counter. She consulted a list and ladled hot vegetable soup into a plastic mug. Bond took the mug. He said anxiously, «Is that all?»
The woman didn't smile. She said severely, «You're lucky. You Wouldn't be getting as much on Starvation. And you may have soup every day at midday and two cups of tea at four o'clock.»
Bond gave her a bitter smile. He took the horrible mug over to one of the little café tables near the windows overlooking the dark lawn and sat down and sipped the thin soup while he watched some of his fellow inmates meandering aimlessly, weakly, through the room. Now he felt a grain of sympathy for the wretches. Now he was a member of their club. Now he had been initiated. He drank the soup down to the last neat cube of carrot and walked abstractedly off to his room, thinking of Count Lippe, thinking of sleep, but above all thinking of his empty stomach.
After two days of this, Bond felt terrible. He had a permanent slight nagging headache, the whites of his eyes had turned rather yellow, and his tongue was deeply furred. His masseur told him not to worry. This was as it should be. These were the poisons leaving his body. Bond, now a permanent prey to lassitude, didn't argue. Nothing seemed to matter any more but the single orange and hot water for breakfast, the mugs of hot soup, and the cups of tea which Bond filled with spoonfuls of brown sugar, the only variety that had Mr. Wain's sanction.
On the third day, after the massage and the shock of the sitz baths, Bond had on his program «Osteopathic Manipulation and Traction.» He was directed to a new section of the basement, withdrawn and silent. When he opened the designated door he expected to find some hairy H-man waiting for him with flexed muscles. (H-man, he had discovered, stood for Health-man. It was the smart thing to call oneself if you were a naturopath.) He stopped in his tracks. The girl, Patricia something, whom he had not set eyes on since his first day, stood waiting for him beside the couch. He closed the door behind him and said, «Good lord. Is this what you do?»
She was used to this reaction of the men patients and rather touchy about it. She didn't smile. She said in a business-like voice, «Nearly ten per cent of osteopaths are women. Take off your clothes, please. Everything except your shorts.» When Bond had amusedly obeyed she told him to stand in front of her. She walked round him, examining him with eyes in which there was nothing but professional interest. Without commenting on his scars she told him to lie face downward on the couch and, with strong, precise, and thoroughly practiced holds, went through the handling and joint-cracking of her profession.
Bond soon realized that she was an extremely powerful girl. His muscled body, admittedly unresistant, seemed to be easy going for her. Bond felt a kind of resentment at the neutrality of this relationship between an attractive girl and a half-naked man. At the end of the treatment she told him to stand up and clasp his hands behind her neck. Her eyes, a few inches away from his, held nothing but professional concentration. She hauled strongly away from him, presumably with the object of freeing his vertebrae. This was too much for Bond. At the end of it, when she told him to release his hands, he did nothing of the sort. He tightened them, pulled her head sharply toward him, and kissed her full on the lips. She ducked quickly down through his arms and straightened herself, her cheeks red and her eyes shining with anger. Bond smiled at her, knowing that he had never missed a slap in the face, and a hard one at that, by so little. He said, «It's all very well, but I just had to do it. You shouldn't have a mouth like that if you're going to be an osteopath.»
The anger in her eyes subsided a fraction. She said, «The last time that happened, the man had to leave by the next train.»
Bond laughed. He made a threatening move toward her. «If I thought there was any hope of being kicked out of this damn place I'd kiss you again.»
She said, «Don't be silly. Now pick up your things. You've got half an hour's traction.» She smiled grimly. «That ought to keep you quiet.»
Bond said morosely, «Oh, all right. But only on condition you let me take you out on your next day off.»
«We'll see about that. It depends how you behave at the next treatment.» She held open the door. Bond picked up his clothes and went out, almost colliding with a man coming down the passage. It was Count Lippe, in slacks and a gay windcheater. He ignored Bond. With a smile and a slight bow he said to the girl, «Here comes the lamb to the slaughter. I hope you're not feeling too strong today.» His eyes twinkled charmingly.
The girl said briskly, «Just get ready, please. I shan't be a moment putting Mr. Bond on the traction table.» She moved off down the passage with Bond following.
She opened the door of a small anteroom, told Bond to put his things down on a chair, and pulled aside plastic curtains that formed a partition. Just inside the curtains was an odd-looking kind of surgical couch in leather and gleaming aluminum. Bond didn't like the look of it at all. While the girl fiddled with a series of straps attached to three upholstered sections that appeared to be on runners, Bond examined the contraption suspiciously. Below the couch was a stout electric motor on which a plate announced that this was the Hercules Motorized Traction Table. A power drive in the shape of articulated rods stretched upward from the motor to each of the three cushioned sections of the couch and terminated in tension screws to which the three sets of straps were attached. In front of the raised portion where the patient's head would lie, and approximately level with his face, was a large dial marked in lbs.-pressure up to 200. After 150 lbs. the numerals were in red. Below the headrest were grips for the patient's hands. Bond noted gloomily that the leather on the grips was stained with, presumably, sweat.
«Lie face downward here, please.» The girl held the straps ready. Bond said obstinately, «Not until you tell me what this thing does. I don't like the look of it.»
The girl said patiently, «This is simply a machine for stretching your spine. You've got mild spinal lesions. It will help to free those. And at the base of your spine you've got some right sacroiliac strain. It'll help that too. You won't find it bad at all. Just a stretching sensation. It's very soothing, really. Quite a lot of patients fall asleep.»
«This one won't,» said Bond firmly. «What strength are you going to give me? Why are those top figures in red? Are you sure I'm not going to be pulled apart?»
The girl said with a touch of impatience, «Don't be silly. Of course if there was too much tension it might be dangerous. But I shall be starting you only at 90 pounds and in a quarter of an hour I shall come and see how you're getting on and probably put you up to 120. Now come along. I've got another patient waiting.»
Reluctantly Bond climbed up on the couch and lay on his face with his nose and mouth buried in a deep cleft in the headrest. He said, his voice muffled by the leather, «If you kill me, I'll sue.»
He felt the straps being tightened round his chest and then round his hips. The girl's skirt brushed the side of his face as she bent to reach the control lever beside the big dial. The motor began to whine. The straps tightened and then relaxed, tightened and relaxed. Bond felt as if his body was being stretched by giant hands. It was a curious sensation, but not unpleasant. With difficulty Bond raised his head. The needle on the dial stood at 90. Now the machine was making a soft iron hee-hawing, like a mechanical donkey, as the gears alternatively engaged and disengaged to produce the rhythmic traction. «Are you all right?»
«Yes.» He heard the girl pass through the plastic curtains and then the click of the outer door. Bond abandoned himself to the soft feel of the leather at his face, to the relentless intermittent haul on his spine and to the hypnotic whine and drone of the machine. It really wasn't too bad. How silly to have had nerves about it!
A quarter of an hour later he heard again the click of the outside door and the swish of the curtains.
«All right?»
«Fine.»
The girl's hand came into his line of vision as she turned the lever. Bond raised his head. The needle crept up to 120. Now the pull was really hard and the voice of the machine was much louder.
The girl put her head down to his. She laid a reassuring hand on his shoulder. She said, her voice loud above the noise of the gears, «Only another quarter of an hour to go.»
«All right.» Bond's voice was careful. He was probing the new strength of the giant haul on his body. The curtains swished. Now the click of the outside door was drowned by the noise of the machine. Slowly Bond relaxed again into the arms of the rhythm.
It was perhaps five minutes later when a tiny movement of the air against his face made Bond open his eyes. In front of his eyes was a hand, a man's hand, reaching softly for the lever of the accelerator. Bond watched it, at first fascinated, and then with dawning horror as the lever was slowly depressed and the straps began to haul madly at his body. He shouted–something, he didn't know what. His whole body was racked with a great pain. Desperately he lifted his head and shouted again. On the dial, the needle was trembling at 200! His head dropped back, exhausted. Through a mist of sweat he watched the hand softly release the lever. The hand paused and turned slowly so that the back of the wrist was just below his eyes. In the center of the wrist was the little red sign of the zigzag and the two bisecting lines. A voice said quietly, close up against his ear, «You will not meddle again, my friend.» Then there was nothing but the great whine and groan of the machine and the bite of the straps that were tearing his body in half. Bond began to scream, weakly, while the sweat poured from him and dripped off the leather cushions onto the floor. Then suddenly there was blackness.
4. Tea and Animosity
It is just as well that the body retains no memory of pain. Yes, it hurt, that abscess, that broken bone, but just how it hurt, and how much, is soon forgotten by the brain and the nerves. It is not so with pleasant sensations, a scent, a taste, the particular texture of a kiss. These things can be almost totally recalled. Bond, gingerly exploring his sensations as life came flooding back into his body, was astonished that the web of agony that had held his body so utterly had now completely dissolved. It was true that his whole spine ached as if it had been beaten, each vertebra separately, with wooden truncheons, but his pain was recognizable, something within his knowledge and therefore capable of control. The searing tornado that had entered his body and utterly dominated it, replacing his identity with its own, had gone. How had it been? What had it been like? Bond couldn't remember except that it had reduced him to something lower in the scale of existence than a handful of grass in the mouth of a tiger. The murmur of voices grew more distinct.
«But what told you first that something was wrong, Miss Fearing?»
«It was the noise, the noise of the machine. I had just finished a treatment. A few minutes later I heard it. I'd never heard it so loud. I thought perhaps the door had been left open. I wasn't really worried but I came along to make sure. And there it was. The indicator up to 200! I tore down the lever and got the straps off and ran to the surgery and found the coramine and injected it into the vein–one c.c, The pulse was terribly weak. Then I telephoned you.»
«You seem to have done everything possible, Miss Fearing. And I'm sure you bear no responsibility for this terrible thing.» Mr. Wain's voice was doubtful. «It really is most unfortunate. I suppose the patient must have jerked the lever, somehow. Perhaps he was experimenting. He might easily have killed himself. We must tell the company about this and have some safety arrangement installed.»
A hand gingerly clasped Bond's wrist, feeling for his pulse. Bond thought it was time to re-enter the world. He must quickly get himself a doctor, a real one, not one of these grated-carrot merchants. A sudden wave of anger poured through him. This was all M's fault. M was mad. He would have it out with him when he got back to Headquarters. If necessary he would go higher–to the Chiefs of Staff, the Cabinet, the Prime Minister. M was a dangerous lunatic–a danger to the country. It was up to Bond to save England. The weak, hysterical thoughts whirled through his brain, mixed themselves up with the hairy hand of Count Lippe, the mouth of Patricia Fearing, the taste of hot vegetable soup, and, as consciousness slipped away from him again the diminishing voice of Mr. Wain: «No structural damage. Only considerable surface abrasion of the nerve ends. And of course shock. You will take personal charge of the case, Miss Fearing. Rest, warmth, and effleurage. Is that under . . . ?»
***
Rest, warmth, and effleurage. When Bond came round again, he was lying face downward on his bed and his whole body was bathed in exquisite sensation. Beneath him was the soft warmth of an electric blanket, his back glowed with the heat from two large sun lamps, and two hands, clad in what felt to be some particularly velvety fur, were rhythmically passing, one after the other, up and down the whole length of his body from his neck to the backs of his knees. It was a most gentle and almost piercingly luxurious experience, and Bond lay and bathed himself in it.
Presently he said sleepily, «Is that what they call effleurage?»
The girl's voice said softly, «I thought you'd come round. The whole tone of your skin suddenly changed. How are you feeling?»
«Wonderful. I'd be still better for a double whisky on the rocks.»
The girl laughed. «Mr. Wain did say dandelion tea would be best for you. But I thought a little stimulant might be good, I mean just this once. So I brought the brandy with me. And there's plenty of ice as I'm going to give you an ice-pack presently. Would you really like some? Wait, I'll put your dressing gown over you and then you can see if you can turn over. I'll look the other way.»
Bond heard the lamps being pulled away. Gingerly, he turned on his side. The dull ache returned, but it was already wearing off. He cautiously slipped his legs over the side of the bed and sat up.
Patricia Fearing stood in front of him, clean, white, comforting, desirable. In one hand was a pair of heavy mink gloves, but with the fur covering the palm instead of the back. In the other was a glass. She held out the glass. As Bond drank and heard the reassuring, real-life tinkle of the ice, he thought: This is a most splendid girl. I will settle down with her. She will give me effleurage all day long and from time to time a good tough drink like this. It will be a life of great beauty. He smiled at her and held out the empty glass and said, «More.»
She laughed, mostly with relief that he was completely alive again. She took the glass and said, «Well, just one more, then. But don't forget it's on an empty stomach. It may make you dreadfully tight.» She paused with the brandy bottle in her hand. Suddenly her gaze was cool, clinical. «And now you must try and tell me what happened. Did you accidentally touch the lever or something? You gave us all a dreadful fright. Nothing like that has ever happened before. The traction table's really perfectly safe, you know.»
Bond looked candidly into her eyes. He said reassuringly, «Of course. I was just trying to get more comfortable. I heaved about and I do remember that my hand hit something rather hard. I suppose it must have been the lever. Then I don't remember any more. I must have been awfully lucky you came along so quickly.»
She handed him the fresh drink. «Well, it's all over now. And thank heavens nothing's badly strained. Another two days of treatment and you'll be right as rain.» She paused. She looked rather embarrassed, «Oh, and Mr. Wain asks if you could possibly keep all this, all this trouble, to yourself. He doesn't want the other patients to get worried.»
I should think not, thought Bond. He could see the headlines, «PATIENT TORN NEARLY LIMB FROM LIMB AT NATURE CLINIC. RACK MACHINE GOES BERSERK. MINISTRY OF HEALTH STEPS IN.»
He said, «Of course I won't say anything. It was my fault, anyway.» He finished his drink, handed back the glass, and cautiously lay back on the bed. He said, «That was marvelous. Now how about some more of the mini treatment. And by the way. Will you marry me? You're the only girl I've ever met who knows how to treat a man properly.»
She laughed. «Don't be silly. And turn over on your face. It's your back that needs treatment.»
«How do you know?»
***
Two days later, Bond was once more back in the half-world of the nature cure. The routine of the early morning glass of hot water, the orange, carefully sliced into symmetrical pigs by some ingenious machine wielded, no doubt, by the wardress in charge of diets, then the treatments, the hot soup, the siesta, and the blank, aimless walk or bus ride to the nearest tea shop for the priceless strength-giving cups of tea laced with brown sugar. Bond loathed and despised tea, that flat, soft, time-wasting opium of the masses, but on his empty stomach, and in his febrile state, the sugary brew acted almost as an intoxicant. Three cups, he reckoned, had the effect, not of hard liquor. but of just about half a bottle of champagne in the outside world, in real life. He got to know them all, these dainty opium dens–Rose Cottage, which he avoided after the woman charged him extra for emptying the sugar bowl; The Thatched Barn, which amused him because it was a real den of iniquity–large plates of sugar cakes put on one's table, the piercing temptation of the smell of hot scones; The Transport Cafe, where the Indian tea was black and strong and the lorry drivers brought in a smell of sweat and petrol and the great world (Bond found that all his senses, particularly his palate and nose, had miraculously become sharpened), and a dozen other cottagey, raftery nooks where elderly couples with Ford Populars and Morris Minors talked in muted tones about children called Len and Ron and Pearl and Ethel, and ate in small mouthfuls with the points of their teeth and made not a sound with the tea things. It was all a world whose ghastly daintiness and propriety would normally have sickened him. NOW, empty, weak, drained of all the things that belonged to his tough, fast, basically dirty life, through banting, he had somehow regained some of the innocence and purity of childhood. In this frame of mind the naïveté and total lack of savor, surprise, excitement, of the dimity world of the Nice-Cup-of-Tea, of the Home-Made Cakes, and the One-Lump-or-Two, were perfectly acceptable.
And the extraordinary thing was that he could not remember when he had felt so well–not strong, but without any aches and pains, clear of eye and skin, sleeping ten hours a day and, above all, without that nagging sense of morning guilt that one is slowly wrecking one's body. It was really quite disturbing. Was his personality changing? Was he losing his edge, his point, his identity? Was he losing the vices that were so much part of his ruthless, cruel, fundamentally tough character? Who was he in process of becoming? A soft, dreaming, kindly idealist who would naturally leave the Service and become instead a prison visitor, interest himself in youth clubs, march with the H-bomb marchers, eat nut cutlets, try and change the world for the better? James Bond would have been more worried, as day by day the H-cure drew his teeth, if it had not been for three obsessions which belonged to his former life and which would not leave him–a passionate longing for a large dish of Spaghetti Bolognese containing plenty of chopped garlic and accompanied by a whole bottle of the cheapest, rawest Chianti (bulk for his empty stomach and sharp tastes for his starved palate), an overwhelming desire for the strong, smooth body of Patricia Fearing, and a deadly concentration on ways and means to wring the guts of Count Lippe.
The first two would have to wait, though tantalizing schemes for consuming both dishes on the day of his release from Shrublands occupied much of his mind. So far as Count Lippe was concerned, work had started on the project from the moment Bond took up again the routine of the cure.
With the cold intensity he would have employed against an enemy agent, say in a hotel in Stockholm or Lisbon during the war, James Bond set about spying on the other man. He became garrulous and inquisitive, chatting with Patricia Fearing about the various routines at Shrublands. «But when do the staff find time to have lunch?» «That man Lippe looks very fit. Oh, he's worried about his waist-line! Aren't the electric blanket-baths good for that? No, I haven't seen the Turkish Bath Cabinet. Must have a look at it sometime.» And to his masseur: «Haven't seen that big chap about lately, Count something–Ripper? Hipper? Oh yes, Lippe. Oh, noon every day? I think I must try and get that time as well. Nice being clear for the rest of the day. And I'd like to have a spell in the Turkish Bath thing when you've finished the massage. Need a good sweat.» Innocently, fragment by fragment, James Bond built up a plan of operations–a plan that would leave him and Lippe alone among the machinery of the soundproof treatment rooms.
For there would be no other opportunity. Count Lippe kept to his room in the main building until his treatment time at noon. In the afternoons he swished away in the violet Bentley–to Bournemouth, it seemed, where he had «business.» The night porter let him in around eleven each night. One afternoon–in the siesta hour–Bond slipped the Yale lock on Count Lippe's room with a straight piece of plastic cut off a child's airplane he had bought for the purpose in Washington. He went over the room meticulously and drew a blank. All he learned–from the clothes–was that the Count was a much-traveled man–shirts from Charvet, ties from Tripler, Dior, and Hardy Amies, shoes from Peel, and raw-silk pajamas from Hong Kong. The dark red morocco suitcase from Mark Cross might have contained secrets, and Bond eyed the silk linings and toyed with the Count's Wilkinson razor. But no! Better that revenge, if it could be contrived, should come out of a clear sky.
That same afternoon, drinking his treacly tea, Bond scraped together the meager scraps of his knowledge of Count Lippe. He was about thirty, attractive to women, and physically, to judge from the naked body Bond had seen, very strong. His blood would be Portuguese with a dash of Chinaman and he gave the appearance of wealth. What did he do? What was his profession? At first glance Bond would have put him down as a tough maquereau from the Ritz bar in Paris, the Palace at St. Moritz, the Carlton at Cannes–good at backgammon, polo, water-skiing, but with the yellow streak of the man who lives on women. But Lippe had heard Bond making inquiries about him and that had been enough for an act of violence–an inspired act that he had carried out swiftly and coolly when he finished his treatment with the Fearing girl and knew, from her remark, that Bond would be alone on the traction table. The act of violence might only have been designed to warn, but equally, since Lippe could only guess at the effect of a 200-pound pull on the spine, it might have been designed to kill. Why? Who was this man who had so much to hide? And what were his secrets? Bond poured the last of his tea on to a mound of brown sugar. One thing was certain–the secrets were big ones.
Bond never seriously considered telling Headquarters about Lippe and what he had done to Bond. The whole thing, against the background of Shrublands, was so unlikely and so utterly ridiculous. And somehow Bond, the man of action and resource, came out of it all as something of a ninny. Weakened by a diet of hot water and vegetable soup, the ace of the Secret Service had been tied to some kind of a rack and then a man had come along and just pulled a lever up a few notches and reduced the hero of a hundred combats to a quivering jelly! No! There was only one solution–a private solution, man to man. Later perhaps, to satisfy his curiosity, it might be amusing to put through a good Trace on Count Lippe–with S.I.S. Records, with the C.I.D., with the Hong Kong Station. But for the time being Bond would stay quiet, keep out of Count Lippe's way, and plan meticulously for just the right kind of pay-off.
By the time the fourteenth day, the last day, came, Bond had it all fixed–the time, the place, and the method.
At ten o'clock Mr. Joshua Wain received Bond for his final checkup. When Bond came into the consulting room, Mr. Wain was standing by the open window doing deep-breathing exercises. With a final thorough exhalation through the nostrils he turned to greet Bond with an Ah! Bisto! expression on his healthily flushed face. His smile was elastic with good-fellowship. «And how's the world treating you, Mr. Bond? No ill effects from that unhappy little accident? No. Quite so. The body is a most remarkable piece of mechanism. Extraordinary power of recovery. Now then, shirt off, please, and we'll see what Shrublands has managed to do for you.»
Ten minutes later, Bond, blood pressure down to 132/84, weight reduced by ten pounds, osteopathic lesions gone, clear of eye and tongue, was on his way down to the basement rooms for his final treatment.
As usual, it was clammily quiet and neutral-smelling in the white rooms and corridors. From the separate cubicles there came an occasional soft exchange between patient and staff, and, in the background, intermittent plumbing noises. The steady whir of the ventilation system created the impression of the deep innards of a liner in a dead calm. It was nearly twelve-thirty. Bond lay face down on the massage table and listened for the authoritative voice and the quick slap of the naked feet of his prey. The door at the end of the corridor sighed open and sighed shut again. «Morning, Beresford. All ready for me? Make it good and hot today. Last treatment. Three more ounces to lose. Right?»
«Very good, sir.» The gym shoes of the chief attendant, followed by the slapping feet, came down the corridor outside the plastic curtain of the massage room and on to the end room of all, the electric Turkish bath. The door sighed shut and a few minutes later sighed again as the attendant, having installed Count Lippe, came back down the corridor. Twenty minutes went by. Twenty-five. Bond rolled off the table. «Well, thanks, Sam. You've done me a power of good. I'll be back to see you again one of these days, I expect. I'll just go along and have a final salt rub and a sitz bath. You cut along to your carrot cutlets. Don't worry about me. I'll let myself out when I've finished.» Bond wrapped a towel round his waist and moved off down the corridor. There was a flurry of movement and voices as the attendants got rid of their patients and made their way through the staff door for the luncheon break. The last patient, a reformed drunk, called back from the entrance, «See you later, Irrigator!» Somebody laughed. Now the petty-officer voice of Beresford sounded down the corridor, making certain that everything was shipshape: «Windows, Bill? Okay. Your next is Mr. Dunbar at two sharp. Len, tell the laundry we shall need more towels after lunch. Ted . . . Ted. You there, Ted? Well, then, Sam, look after Count Lippe, would you, Turkish bath.»
Bond had listened to this routine for a whole week, noting the men that cut minutes off their duty and got off early to lunch, noting the ones that stayed to do their full share of the last chores. Now, from the open door of the empty shower room, he called back, in Sam's deep voice, «Okay, Mr. Beresford,» and waited for the crisp squeak of the gym shoes on the linoleum. There it was! The brief pause halfway down the corridor and then the double sigh as the staff door opened and shut. Now there was dead silence save for the hum of the fans. The treatment rooms were empty. Now there was only James Bond and Count Lippe.
Bond waited a moment and then came out of the shower room and softly opened the door to the Turkish bath. He had had one session in the place, just to get the geography clear in his mind, and the scene was exactly as he remembered.
It was a white cubicle treatment room like all the others, but in this one the only object was a big cream metal-and-plastic box about five feet tall by four feet square. It was closed on all sides but the top. The front of the big cabinet was hinged to allow a patient to climb in and sit inside and there was a hole in the top with a foam-rubber support for the nape of the neck and the chin, through which the patient's head emerged. The rest of his body was exposed to the heat from many rows of naked electric bulbs inside the cabinet and the degree of heat was thermostatically controlled by a dial at the back of the cabinet. It was a simple sweat box, designed, as Bond had noticed on his previous visit to the room, by the Medikalischer Maschinenbau G.m.b.H., 44 Franziskanerstrasse, Ulm, Bavaria.
The cabinet faced away from the door. At the hiss of the hydraulic fastener, Count Lippe said angrily, «Goddammit, Beresford. Let me out of this thing. I'm sweating like a pig.»
«You said you wanted it hot, sir.» Bond's amiable voice was a good approximation to the chief attendant's.
«Don't argue, goddammit. Let me out of here.»
«I don't think you quite realize the value of heat in the H-cure, sir. Heat resolves many of the toxins in the blood stream and for the matter of that in the muscle tissue also. A patient suffering from your condition of pronounced toxemia will find much benefit from the heat treatment.» Bond found the H-lingo rattling quite easily off the tongue. He was not worried about the consequences to Beresford. He would have the solid alibi of luncheon in the staff canteen.
«Don't give me that crap. I tell you, let me out of here.»
Bond examined the dial on the back of the machine. The needle stood at 120. What should he give the man? The dial ran up to 200 degrees. That much might roast him alive. This was only to be a punishment, not a murder. Perhaps 180 would be a just retribution. Bond clicked the knob up to 180. He said, «I think just half an hour of real heat will do you the world of good, sir.» Bond dropped the sham voice. He added sharply, «And if you catch fire you can sue.»
The dripping head tried to turn, failed. Bond moved toward the door. Count Lippe now had a new voice, controlled but desperate. He said woodenly, concealing the knowledge and the hate, «Give you a thousand pounds and we're quits.» He heard the hiss of the open door. «Ten thousand. All right then, fifty.»
Bond closed the door firmly behind him and walked quickly down the corridor to put on his clothes and get out. Behind him, deeply muffled, came the first shout for help. Bond closed his ears. There was nothing that a painful week in hospital and plenty of gentian violet or tannic acid jelly wouldn't cure. But it did cross his mind that a man who could offer a bribe of fifty thousand pounds must be either very rich or have some very urgent reason for needing freedom of movement. It was surely too much to pay just for avoidance of pain.
***
James Bond was right. The outcome of this rather childish trial of strength between two extremely tough and ruthless men, in the bizarre surroundings of a nature clinic in Sussex, was to upset, if only in a minute fashion, the exactly timed machinery of a plot that was about to shake the governments of the Western world.
5. S.P.E.C.T.R.E.
The Boulevard Haussmann, in the VIIIth and IXth Arrondissements, stretches from the Rue du Faubourg St. Honoré to the Opéra. It is very long and very dull, but it is perhaps the solidest street in the whole of Paris. Not the richest–the Avenue d'Iéna has that distinction –but rich people are not necessarily solid people and too many of the landlords and tenants in the Avenue d'Iéena have names ending in «escu,» «ovitch,» «ski,» and «stein,» and these are sometimes not the endings of respectable names. Moreover, the Avenue d'Iéna is almost entirely residential. The occasional discreet brass plates giving the name of a holding company in Liechtenstein or in the Bahamas or the Canton de Vaud in Switzerland are there for tax purposes only–the cover names for private family fortunes seeking alleviation from the punitive burden of the Revenue, or, more briefly, tax-dodging. The Boulevard Haussmann is not like that. The massive, turn-of-the-century, bastard Second Empire buildings in heavily ornamented brick and stucco are the «sieges,» the seats, of important businesses. Here are the head offices of the gros industriels from Lille, Lyons, Bordeaux, Clermont Ferrand, the locaux of the gros légumes , the «big vegetables» in cotton, artificial silk, coal, wine, steel, and shipping. If, among them, there are some fly-by-nights concealing a lack of serious capital– des fonds sérieux –behind a good address, it would only be fair to admit that such men of paper exist also behind the even solider frontages of Lombard and Wall Streets.
It is appropriate that among this extremely respectable company of tenants, suitably diversified by a couple of churches, a small museum and the French Shakespeare Society, you should also find the headquarters of charitable organizations. At No. 136 bis , for instance, a discreetly glittering brass plate says: «F.I.R.C.O.» and, underneath: « Fraternité Internationale de la Résistance Contre l'Oppression .» If you were interested in this organization, either as an idealist or because you were a salesman of, say, office furniture, and you pressed the very clean porcelain bell button, the door would in due course be opened by an entirely typical French concierge. If your business was serious or obviously well-meaning, the concierge would show you across a rather dusty hall to tall, bogus Directoire double doors adjoining the over-ornamented cage of a shaky-looking lift. Inside the doors you would be greeted by exactly what you had expected to see–a large dingy room needing a fresh coat of its café-au-lait paint, in which half a dozen men sat at cheap desks and typed or wrote amidst the usual accouterments of a busy organization–IN and OUT baskets, telephones, in this case the old-fashioned standard ones that are typical of such an office in this part of Paris, and dark green metal filing cabinets in which drawers stand open. If you were observant of small details, you might register that all the men were of approximately the same age group, between thirty and forty, and that in an office where you would have expected to find women doing the secretarial work, there were none.
Inside the tall door you would receive the slightly defensive welcome appropriate to a busy organization accustomed to the usual proportion of cranks and time-wasters but, in response to your serious inquiry, the face of the man at the desk near the door would clear and become cautiously helpful. The aims of the Fraternity? We exist, monsieur, to keep alive the ideals that flourished during the last war among members of all Resistance groups. No, monsieur, we are entirely unpolitical. Our funds? They come from modest subscriptions from our members and from certain private persons who share our aims. You have perhaps a relative, a member of a Resistance group, whose whereabouts you seek? Certainly, monsieur. The name? Gregor Karlski, last heard of with Mihailovitch in the summer of 1943. Jules! (He might turn to a particular man and call out.) Karlski, Gregor. Mihailovitch, 1943. Jules would go to a cabinet and there would be a brief pause. Then the reply might come back, Dead. Killed in the bombing of the General's headquarters, October 21st, 1943. I regret, monsieur. Is there anything further we can do for you? Then perhaps you would care to have some of our literature. Forgive me for not having time to spare to give you more details of FIRCO myself. But you will find everything there. This happens to be a particularly busy day. This is the International Refugee Year and we have many inquiries such as yours from all over the world. Good afternoon, monsieur. Pas de quoi . So, or more or less so, it would be and you would go out on to the Boulevard satisfied and even impressed with an organization that was doing its excellent if rather vague work with so much dedication and efficiency.
On the day after James Bond had completed his nature cure and had left for London after, the night before, scoring a most satisfactory left and right of Spaghetti Bolognese and Chianti at Lucien's in Brighton and of Miss Patricia Fearing on the squab seats from her bubble car high up on the Downs, an emergency meeting of the trustees of FIRCO was called for seven o'clock in the evening. The men, for they were all men, came from all over Europe, by train or car or airplane, and they entered No. 136 bis singly or in pairs, some by the front door and some by the back, at intervals during the late afternoon and evening. Each man had his allotted time for arriving at these meetings–so many minutes, up to two hours, before zero hour–and each man alternated between the back and the front door from meeting to meeting. Now there were two «concierges» for each door and other less obvious security measures–warning systems, closed-circuit television scanning of the two entrances, and complete sets of dummy FIRCO minutes, backed up one hundred per cent by the current business of the FIRCO organization on the ground floor. Thus, if necessary, the deliberations of the «trustees» could, in a matter only of seconds, be switched from clandestine to overt–as solidly overt as any meeting of principals in the Boulevard Haussmann could possibly be.
At seven o'clock precisely the twenty men who made up this organization strode, lounged, or sidled, each according to his character, into the workmanlike board room on the third floor. Their chairman was already in his seat. No greetings were exchanged. They were ruled by the chairman to be a waste of breath and, in an organization of this nature, hypocritical. The men filed round the table and took their places at their numbers, the numbers from one to twenty-one that were their only names and that, as a small security precaution, advanced round the rota by two digits at midnight on the first of every month. Nobody smoked–drinking was taboo and smoking frowned upon– and nobody bothered to glance down at the bogus FIRCO agenda on the table in front of him. They sat very still and looked up the table at the chairman with expressions of the sharpest interest and what, in lesser men, would have been obsequious respect.
Any man seeing No. 2, for that was the chairman's number of the month, even for the first time would have looked at him with some degree of the same feelings, for he was one of those men–one meets perhaps only two or three in a lifetime–who seem almost to suck the eyes out of your head. These rare men are apt to possess three basic attributes–their physical appearance is extraordinary, they have a quality of relaxation, of inner certainty, and they exude a powerful animal magnetism. The herd has always recognized the other-worldliness of these phenomena, and in primitive tribes you will find that any man singled out by nature in this fashion will also have been chosen by the tribe to be their chief. Certain great men of history, perhaps Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great, Napoleon, among the politicians, have had these qualities. Perhaps they even explain the hypnotic sway of an altogether more meager individual, the otherwise inexplicable Adolf Hitler, over eighty million of the most gifted nation in Europe. Certainly, No. 2 had these qualities and any man in the street would have recognized them–let alone these twenty chosen men. For them, despite the deep cynicism ingrained in their respective callings, despite their basic insensitivity toward the human race, he was, however reluctantly, their Supreme Commander–almost their god.
This man's name was Ernst Stavro Blofeld and he was born in Gdynia of a Polish father and a Greek mother on May 28th, 1908. After matriculating in economics and political history at the University of Warsaw he studied engineering and radionics at the Warsaw Technical Institute and at the age of twenty-five obtained a modest post in the central administration of the Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs. This would seem a curious choice for such a highly gifted youth, but Blofeld had come to an interesting conclusion about the future of the World. He had decided that fast and accurate communication lay, in a contracting world, at the very heart of power. Knowledge of the truth before the next man, in peace or war, lay, he thought, behind every correct decision in history and was the source of all great reputations. He was doing very well on this theory, watching the cables and radiograms that passed through his hands at the Central Post Office and buying or selling on margin on the Warsaw Bourse–only occasionally, when he was absolutely certain, but then very big–when the basic nature of the postal traffic changed. Now Poland was mobilizing for war and a spate of munition orders and diplomatic cables poured through his department. Blofeld changed his tactics. This was valuable stuff, worth nothing to him, but priceless to the enemy. Clumsily at first, and then more expertly, he contrived to take copies of cables, choosing, for the ciphers hid their contents from him, only those prefixed «MOST IMMEDIATE» or «MOST SECRET.» Then, working carefully, he built up in his head a network of fictitious agents. These were real but small people in the various embassies and armament firms to whom most of the traffic was addressed–a junior cipher clerk in the British Embassy, a translator working for the French, private secretaries–real ones–in the big firms. These names were easily obtained from the diplomatic lists, by ringing up a firm and asking Inquiries for the name of the chairman's private secretary. He was speaking for the Red Cross. They wished to discuss the possibility of a donation from the chairman. And so on. When Blofeld had all his names right, he christened his network TARTAR and made a discreet approach to the German Military Attache with one or two specimens of its work. He was rapidly passed on to the representative of AMT IV of the Abwehr, and from then on things were easy. When this pot was bubbling merrily, and the money (he refused to accept payment except in American dollars) coming in (it came in fast; he explained that he had so many agents to pay off), he proceeded to widen his market. He considered the Russians but dismissed them, and the Czechs, as probable non-, or at any rate slow-, payers. Instead he chose the Americans and the Swedes, and money positively showered in on him. He soon realized, for he was a man of almost mimosaic sensibility in matters of security, that the pace could not possibly last. There would be a leak: perhaps between the Swedish and German secret services, who he knew (for through his contacts with their spies he was picking up the gossip of his new trade) were working closely together in some territories; or through Allied counter-espionage or their cryptographic services; or else one of his notional agents would die or be transferred without his knowledge while he continued to use the name as a source. Anyway, by now he had $200,000 and there was the added spur that the war was getting too close for comfort. It was time for him to be off into the wide world–into one of the safe bits of it. Blofeld carried out his withdrawal expertly. First he slowly petered off the service. Security, he explained, was being tightened up by the English and the French. Perhaps there had been a leak–he looked with mild reproof into the eyes of his contact–this secretary had had a change of heart, that one was asking too much money. Then he went to his friend on the Bourse and, after sealing his lips with a thousand dollars, had all his funds invested in Shell Bearer Bonds in Amsterdam and thence transferred to a Numbered Safe Deposit box with the Diskonto Bank in Zurich. Before the final step of telling his contacts that he was brulé and that the Polish Deuxième Bureau was sniffing at his heels, he paid a visit to Gdynia, called on the registrar and on the church where he had been baptized and, on the pretext of looking up details of an invented friend, neatly cut out the page recording his own name and birth. It remained only to locate the passport factory that operates in every big seaport and purchase a Canadian seaman's passport for $2,000. Then he was off to Sweden by the next boat. After a pause in Stockholm for a careful look round the world and some cool thinking about the probable course of the war, he flew to Turkey on his original Polish passport, transferred his money from Switzerland to the Ottoman Bank in Istanbul, and waited for Poland to fall. When, in due course, this happened, he claimed refuge in Turkey and spent a little money among the right officials in order to get his claim established. Then he settled down. Ankara Radio was glad to have his expert services and he set up RAHIR, another espionage service built on the lines of TARTAR, but rather more solidly. Blofeld wisely waited to ascertain the victor before selling his wares, and it was only when Rommel had been kicked out of Africa that he plumped for the Allies. He finished the war in a blaze of glory and prosperity and with decorations or citations from the British, Americans, and French. Then, with half a million dollars in Swiss banks and a Swedish passport in the name of Serge Angstrom, he slipped off to South America for a rest, some good food, and a fresh think.
And now Ernst Blofeld, the name to which he had decided it was perfectly safe to return, sat in the quiet room in the Boulevard Hauss-mann, gazed slowly round the faces of his twenty men, and looked for eyes that didn't squarely meet his. Blofeld's own eyes were deep black pools surrounded–totally surrounded, as Mussolini's were–by very clear whites. The doll-like effect of this unusual symmetry was enhanced by long silken black eyelashes that should have belonged to a woman. The gaze of these soft doll's eyes was totally relaxed and rarely held any expression stronger than a mild curiosity in the object of their focus. They conveyed a restful certitude in their owner and in their analysis of what they observed. To the innocent they exuded confidence, a wonderful cocoon of confidence in which the observed one could rest and relax, knowing that he was in comfortable, reliable hands. But they stripped the guilty or the false and made him feel transparent–as transparent as a fishbowl through whose sides Blofeld examined, with only the most casual curiosity, the few solid fish, the grains of truth, suspended in the void of deceit or attempted obscurity. Blofeld's gaze was a microscope, the window on the world of a superbly clear brain, with a focus that had been sharpened by thirty years of danger, and of keeping just one step ahead of it, and of an inner self-assurance built up on a lifetime of success in whatever he hadattempted.
The skin beneath the eyes that now slowly, mildly, surveyed his colleagues was unpouched. There was no sign of debauchery, illness, or old age on the large, white, bland face under the square, wiry black crew-cut. The jaw line, going to the appropriate middle-aged fat of authority, showed decision and independence. Only the mouth, under a heavy, squat nose, marred what might have been the face of a philosopher or a scientist. Proud and thin, like a badly healed wound, the compressed, dark lips, capable only of false, ugly smiles, suggested contempt, tyranny, and cruelty–but to an almost Shakespearian degree. Nothing about Blofeld was small.
Blofeld's body weighed about two hundred and eighty pounds. It had once been all muscle–he had been an amateur weight-lifter in his youth–but in the past ten years it had softened and he had a vast belly that he concealed behind roomy trousers and well-cut double-breasted suits, tailored, that evening, out of beige doeskin. Blofeld's hands and feet were long and pointed. They were quick-moving when they wanted to be, but normally, as now, they were still and reposed. For the rest, he didn't smoke or drink and he had never been known to sleep with a member of either sex. He didn't even eat very much. So far as vices or physical weaknesses were concerned, Blofeld had always been an enigma to everyone who had known him.
The twenty men who looked up the long table at this man and waited patiently for him to speak were a curious mixture of national types. But they had certain characteristics in common. They were all in the thirty-to-forty age-group, they all looked extremely fit, and nearly all of them–there were two who were different–had quick, hard, predatory eyes, the eyes of the wolves and the hawks that prey upon the herd. The two who were different were both scientists with scientists' other-worldly eyes–Kotze, the East German physicist who had come over to the West five years before and had exchanged his secrets for a modest pension and retirement in Switzerland, and Maslov, formerly Kandinsky, the Polish electronics expert who, in 1956, had resigned as head of the radio research department of Philips AG of Eindhoven and had then disappeared into obscurity. The other eighteen men consisted of cells of three (Blofeld accepted the Communist triangle system for security reasons) from six national groups and, within these groups, from six of the world's great criminal and subversive organizations. There were three Sicilians from the top echelon of the Unione Siciliano, the Mafia; three Corsican Frenchmen from the Union Corse, the secret society contemporary with and similar to the Mafia that runs nearly all organized crime in France; three former members of SMERSH, the Soviet organization for the execution of traitors and enemies of the State that had been disbanded on the orders of Khrushchev in 1958 and replaced by the Special Executive Department of the M.W.D.; three of the top surviving members of the former Sonderdienst of the Gestapo; three tough Yugoslav operatives who had resigned from Marshal Tito's Secret Police, and three highland Turks (the Turks of the plains are no good) formerly members of Blofeld's RAHIR and subsequently responsible for KRYSTAL, the important Middle East heroin pipeline whose outlet is Beirut. These eighteen men, all experts in conspiracy, in the highest ranges of secret communication and action and, above all, of silence, also shared one supreme virtue–every man had a solid cover. Every man possessed a valid passport with up-to-date visas for the principal countries in the world, and an entirely clean sheet with Interpol and with their respective national police forces. That factor alone, the factor of each man's cleanliness after a lifetime in big crime, was his highest qualification for membership of S.P.E.C.T.R.E.–The Special Executive for Counterintelligence, Terrorism, Revenge, and Extortion.
The founder and chairman of this private enterprise for private profit was Ernst Stavro Blofeld.
6. Violet-Scented Breath
Blofeld completed his inspection of the faces. As he had anticipated, only one pair of eyes had slid away from his. He had known he was right. The double-checked reports had been entirely circumstantial, but his own eyes and his intuition had to be the seal. He slowly put both hands under the table. One hand remained flat on his thigh. The other went to a side pocket and drew out a thin gold vinaigrette and placed it on the table in front of him. He prised open the lid with his thumbnail, took out a violet-scented cachou, and slipped it into his mouth. It was his custom, when unpleasant things had to be said, to sweeten his breath.
Blofeld tucked the cachou under his tongue and began to talk in a soft, resonant, and very beautifully modulated voice.
«I have a report to make to members about The Big Affair, about Plan Omega.» (Blofeld never prefixed his words with «Gentlemen,» «Friends,» «Colleagues,» or the like. These were fripperies.) «But before I proceed to that matter, for security's sake I propose to touch upon another topic.» Blofeld looked mildly round the table. The same pair of eyes evaded his. He continued in a narrative tone of voice: «The Executive will agree that the first three years of our experience have been successful. Thanks in part to our German section, the recovery of Himmler's jewels from the Mondsee was successfully accomplished in total secrecy, and the stones disposed of by our Turkish section in Beirut. Income: £750,000. The disappearance of the safe with its contents intact from the M.W.D. headquarters in East Berlin has never been traced to our Russian section, and the subsequent sale to the American Central Intelligence Agency yielded $500,000. The interception of one thousand ounces of heroin in Naples, the property of the Pastori circuit, when sold to the Firpone interests in Los Angeles, brought in $800,000. The British Secret Service paid £100,000 for the Czech germ-warfare phials from the state chemical factory in Pilsen. The successful blackmail of former S.S. Gruppenführer Sonntag, living under the name of Santos in Havana, yielded a meager $100,000– unfortunately all the man possessed–and the assassination of Peringue, the French heavy-water specialist who went over to the Communists through Berlin added, thanks to the importance of his knowledge and the fact that we got him before he had talked, one billion francs from the Deuxième Bureau. In round sums, as the Special Executive knows from our accounts, the total income to date, not counting our last and undistributed dividend, has amounted to approximately one and a half million pounds sterling in the Swiss francs and Venezuelan bolivars in which for reasons of prudence–they continue to be the hardest currencies in the world–we convert all our takings. This income, as the Special Executive will be aware, has been distributed in accordance with our charter as to ten per cent for overheads and working capital, ten per cent to myself, and the remainder in equal shares of four per cent to the members–a profit to each member of approximately £60,000. This amount I regard as a barely adequate remuneration for members' services–£20,000 a year is not in accordance with our expectations– but you will be aware that Plan Omega will yield sufficient to provide each of us with a considerable fortune and will allow us, if we wish to do so, to wind up our organization and transfer our respective energies to other pursuits.» Blofeld looked down the table. He said amiably, «Any questions?»
The twenty pairs of eyes, on this occasion all of them, gazed stolidly, unemotionally back at their chairman. Each man had made his own calculation, knew his own mind. There was no comment to be extracted from these good, though narrow, minds. They were satisfied, but it was not a part of their harsh personalities to say so. These were known things that their chairman had spoken. It was time for the unknown.
Blofeld slipped a second cachou into his mouth, maneuvered it under his tongue, and continued.
«Then so be it. And now to the last operation, completed a month ago and yielding one million dollars.» Blofeld's eyes moved down the left-hand rank of members to the end of the row. He said softly, «Stand up, No. 7.»
Marius Domingue of the Union Corse, a proud, chunky man with slow eyes, who was wearing ready-made, rather sharp clothes that probably came from the Galleries Barbes in Marseilles, got slowly to his feet. He looked squarely down the table at Blofeld. His big, rough hands hung relaxed at the seams of his trousers. Blofeld appeared to answer his gaze, but in fact he was noting the reaction of the Corsican next to No. 7, No. 12, Pierre Borraud. This man sat directly facing Blofeld at the far end of the long table. It was his eyes that had been evasive during the meeting. Now they were not. Now they were relaxed, assured. Whatever the eyes had feared had passed.
Blofeld addressed the company. «This operation, you will recall, involved the kidnaping of the seventeen-year-old daughter of Magnus Blomberg, owner of the Principality Hotel in Las Vegas and participant in other American enterprises through his membership of the Detroit Purple Gang. The girl was abducted from her father's suite in the Hotel de Paris in Monte Carlo and taken by sea to Corsica. This part of the operation was executed by the Corsican section. One million dollars ransom was demanded. Mr. Blomberg was willing and, in accordance with the instructions of SPECTRE, the money in an inflated life raft was dropped at dusk off the Italian coast near San Remo. At nightfall the raft was recovered by the ship operated by our Sicilian section. This section is to be commended for detecting the transistorized radio transmitter concealed in the raft which it was intended should allow a unit of the French Navy to direction-find our ship and hunt it down. On receipt of the ransom money, and in accordance with our undertaking, the girl was returned to her parents apparently suffering from no ill effects except for the hair dye that had been necessary to transfer her from Corsica to a wagon-lit in the Blue Train from Marseilles. I say `apparently.' From a source in the police commissariat at Nice, I now learn that the girl was violated during her captivity in Corsica.» Blofeld paused to allow this intelligence time to sink in. He continued. «It is the parents who maintain that she was violated. It is possible that only carnal knowledge, with her consent, was involved. No matter. This organization undertook that the girl would be returned undamaged. Without splitting hairs about the effect of sexual knowledge on a girl, I am of the opinion that, whether the act was voluntary or involuntary on the girl's part, she was returned to her parents in a damaged, or at least used, condition.» Blofeld rarely employed gestures. Now he slowly opened the left hand that lay on the table. He said, in the same even tone of voice, «We are a large and powerful organization. I am not concerned with morals or ethics, but members will be aware that I desire, and most strongly recommend, that SPECTRE shall conduct itself in a superior fashion. There is no discipline in SPECTRE except self-discipline. We are a dedicated fraternity whose strength lies entirely in the strength of each member. Weakness in one member is the deathwatch beetle in the total structure. You are aware of my views in this matter, and on the occasions when cleansing has been necessary you have approved my action. In this case, I have already done what I considered necessary vis-a-vis this girl's family. I have returned half a million dollars with an appropriate note of apology. This despite the matter of the radio transmitter which was a breach of our contract with the family. I dare say they knew nothing of the ruse. It was typical police behavior–a pattern that I was expecting. The dividend for all of us from this operation will be correspondingly reduced. Regarding the culprit, I have satisfied myself that he is guilty. I have decided on the appropriate action.»
Blofeld looked down the table. His eyes were fixed on the man standing–on No. 7. The Corsican, Marius Domingue, looked back at him steadily. He knew he was innocent. He knew who was guilty. His body was still with tension. But it was not fear. He had faith, as they all had, in the rightness of Blofeld. He could not understand why he had been singled out as a target for all the eyes that were now upon him, but Blofeld had decided, and Blofeld was always right.
Blofeld noted the man's courage and sensed the reasons for it. He also observed the sweat shining on the face of No. 12, the man alone at the head of the table. Good! The sweat would improve the contact.
Under the table, Blofeld's right hand came up off his thigh, found the knob, and pulled the switch.
The body of Pierre Borraud, seized in the iron fist of 3000 volts, arced in the airchair as if it had been kicked in the back. The rough mat of black hair rose sharply straight up on his head and remained upright, a gollywog fringe for the contorted, bursting face. The eyes glared wildly and then faded. A blackened tongue slowly protruded between the snarling teeth and remained hideously extended. Thin wisps of smoke rose from under the hands, from the middle of the back, and from under the thighs where the concealed electrodes in the chair had made contact. Blofeld pulled back the switch. The lights in the room that had dimmed to orange, making a dull supernatural glow, brightened to normal. The roasted-meat and burned-fabric smell spread slowly. The body of No. 12 crumpled horribly. There was a sharp crack as the chin hit the edge of the table. It was all over.
Blofeld's soft, even voice broke the silence. He looked down the table at No. 7. He noted that the stanch, impassive stance had not quavered. This was a good man with good nerves. Blofeld said, «Sit down, No. 7. I am satisfied with your conduct.» (Satisfaction was Blofeld's highest expression of praise.) «It was necessary to distract the attention of No. 12. He knew that he was under suspicion. There might have been an untidy scene.»
Some of the men round the table nodded their understanding. As usual, Blofeld's reasoning made good sense. No one was greatly perturbed or surprised by what he had witnessed. Blofeld always exercised his authority, meted out justice, in full view of the members. There had been two previous occasions of this nature, both at similar meetings and both on security or disciplinary grounds which affected the cohesion, the inner strength, of the whole team. In one, the offender had been shot by Blofeld through the heart with a thick needle fired from a compressed-air pistol–no mean feat at around twelve paces. In the other, the guilty man, who had been seated next to Blofeld on his left hand, had been garroted with a wire noose casually flicked over his head and then, with two swift steps by Blofeld, pulled tight over the back of the man's chair. Those two deaths had been just, necessary. So had this death, the third. Now, the members, ignoring the heap of death at the end of the table, settled in their chairs. It was time to get back to business.
Blofeld snapped shut the gold vinaigrette and slipped it into a waistcoat pocket. «The Corsican section,» he said softly, «will put forward recommendations for a replacement for No. 12. But that can wait until after completion of Plan Omega. On this matter, there are certain details to be discussed. Sub-operator G, recruited by the German section, has made an error, a serious error which radically affects our time table. This man, whose membership of the Red Lightning Tong in Macao should have made him expert in conspiracy, was instructed to make his headquarters at a certain clinic in the south of England, an admirable refuge for his purposes. His instructions were to keep intermittent contact with the airman Petacchi at the not-far-distant Boscombe Downs airfield where the bomber squadron is under training. He was to report at intervals on the airman's fitness and morale. His reports have been satisfactory, and the airman, by the way, continues to be willing. But Sub-operator G was also required to post the Letter on D plus One, or three days from now. Unfortunately this foolish man took it upon himself to become embroiled in a hotheaded fashion with some fellow patient at the clinic, as a result of which, and I need not go into details, he is now in Brighton Central Hospital suffering from second-degree burns. He is thus out of action for at least a week. This will involve an irritating but fortunately not a serious delay in Plan Omega. Fresh instructions have been issued. The airman Petacchi has been provided with a phial of influenza virus of sufficient strength for him to remain on the sick list for one week, during which he will be unable to accept his test flight. He will take the first flight after his recovery and alert us accordingly. The date of his flight will be communicated to Sub-operator G and he will by that time be recovered and will post the Letter according to plan. The Special Executive»– Blofeld glanced round the table–»will readjust their flight schedules to Area Zeta in accordance with the new operational schedule. As for Sub-operator G»–Blofeld bent his gaze, one by one, on the three ex-Gestapo men–»this is an unreliable agent. The German section will make arrangements for his elimination within twenty-four hours of the posting of the Letter. Is that understood?»
The three German faces stood unanimously to attention, «Yes, sir.»
«For the rest,» continued Blofeld, «all is in order. No. 1 has solidly established his cover in Area Zeta. The treasure-hunting myth continues to be built up and has already gained full credence. The crew of the yacht, all hand-picked sub-operators, are accepting the discipline and the security regulations better than had been expected. A suitable land base has been secured. It is remote and not easily accessible. It belongs to an eccentric Englishman the nature of whose friends and personal habits demands seclusion. Your arrival in Area Zeta continues to be minutely planned. Your wardrobe awaits you in Areas F and D, according to your various flight plans. This wardrobe, down to the smallest detail, will be in accordance with your identities as financial backers of the treasure hunt who have demanded to visit the scene and take part in the adventure. You are not gullible millionaires. You are the kind of rich, middle-class rentiers and businessmen who might be expected to be taken in by such a scheme. You are all shrewd, so you have come to watch over your investment and ensure that not one doubloon goes astray.» (Nobody smiled.) «You are all aware of the part you have to play and I trust that you have studied your respective roles with close attention.»
There was a careful nodding of heads round the table. These men were all satisfied that not too much had been asked of them in the matter of their cover. This one was a rich cafe proprietor from Marseilles. (He had been one. He could talk to anyone about the business.) That one had vineyards in Yugoslavia. (He had been brought up in Bled. He could talk vintages and crop sprays with a Calvet from Bordeaux.) That one had smuggled cigarettes from Tangier. (He had done so and would be just sufficiently discreet about it.) All of them had been given covers that would stand up at least to second-degree inspection.
«In the matter of aqualung training,» continued Blofeld, «I would like reports from each section.» Blofeld looked at the Yugoslav section on his left.
«Satisfactory.» «Satisfactory,» echoed the German section, and the Word was repeated round the table.
Blofeld commented, «The safety factor is paramount in all underwater operations. Has this factor received sufficient attention in your respective training schedules?» Affirmative. «And exercises with the new CO2 underwater gun?» Again all sections reported favorably. «And now,» continued Blofeld, «I would like a report from the Sicilian section on the preparations for the bullion drop.»
Fidelio Sciacca was a gaunt, cadaverous Sicilian with a closed face. He might have been, and had been, a schoolmaster with communist leanings. He spoke for the section because his English, the compulsory language of the Special Executive, was the best. He said, in a careful, expository tone of voice, «The chosen area has been carefully reconnoitered. It is satisfactory. I have here»–he touched the briefcase on his lap–»the plans and detailed time table for the information of the Chairman and members. Briefly, the designated area, Area T, is on the northwest slopes of Mount Etna, above the tree line–that is to say between the altitudes of two thousand and three thousand meters. This is an uninhabited and uncultivated area of black lava on the upper slopes of the volcano more or less above the small town of Bronte. For the purpose of the drop, an area approximately two kilometers square will be marked out by the torches of the recovery team. In the center of this area will be positioned a Decca Aircraft Homing Signal as an additional navigational aid. The bullion flight, which I estimate conservatively will consist of five Mark IV Transport Comets, should make their run in at ten thousand feet at an air speed of three hundred miles per hour. Having regard to the weight of each consignment, multiple parachutes will be needed, and, owing to the harsh nature of the terrain, very careful packing in foam rubber will be essential. The parachutes and the packings should be coated in Dayglo or some phosphorescent paint to assist recovery. No doubt»– the man opened his hands–»the SPECTRE memorandum of dropping instructions will include these and other details, but very careful planning and coordination by those responsible for the flight will be necessary.»
«And the recovery team?» Blofeld's voice probed softly but with an urgent edge to it.
«The Capo Mafiosi of the district is my uncle. He has eight grandchildren, to whom he is devoted. I have made it clear that the whereabouts of these children is known to my associates. The man understood. At the same time, as instructed, I made him the offer of one million pounds for total recovery and safe delivery to the depot at Catania. This is a most important sum for the funds of the Unione. The Capo Mafiosi agreed to these terms. He understands that the robbery of a bank is in question. He wishes to know no more. The delay that has been announced will not affect the arrangements. It will still be within the full-moon period. Sub-operator 52, is a most capable man. He has been provided with the Hallicraftor set issued to me for the purpose and he will listen on 18 megacycles in accordance with the schedule. Meanwhile he remains in touch with the Capo Mafiosi, to whom he is related by marriage.»
Blofeld was silent for a long two minutes. He slowly nodded. «I am satisfied. So far as the next step is concerned, the disposal of the bullion, this will be in the hands of Sub-operator 201, of whom we have had full experience. He is a man to be trusted. The M.V. Mercurial will load at Catania and proceed through the Suez Canal to Goa, in Portuguese India. En route, at a designated cross-bearing in the Arabian Gulf, she will rendezvous with a merchant ship owned by a consortium of the chief Bombay bullion brokers. The bullion will be transferred to this ship in exchange for the equivalent value, at the ruling gold bullion price, in used Swiss francs, dollars, and bolivars. These large amounts of currency will be broken up into the allotted percentages and will then be transferred from Goa by chartered plane to twenty-two different Swiss banks in Zurich, where they will be placed in deposit boxes. The keys to these numbered boxes will be distributed to members after this meeting. From that moment on, and subject of course to the usual security regulations regarding injudicious spending and display, these deposits will be entirely at the disposal of members.» Blofeld's slow, calm eyes surveyed the meeting. «Is this procedure considered satisfactory?»
There were cautious nods. No. 18, Kandinsky, the Polish electronics expert, spoke up. He spoke without diffidence. There was no diffidence between these men. «This is not my province,» he said seriously. «But is there not danger that one of the navies concerned will intercept this ship, the Mercurial , and remove the bullion? It will be clear to the Western powers that the bullion will have to be removed from Sicily. Various patrols of the air and sea would be an easy matter.»
«You forget»–Blofeld's voice was patient–»that neither the first, nor if need be the second, bomb will be rendered safe until the money is in the Swiss banks. There will be no risk on that score. Nor, another possibility that I had envisaged, is there likely to be danger of our ship being pirated on the high seas by some independent operator. I envisage that complete secrecy will be enforced by the Western powers. Any leakage would result in panic. Any other questions?»
Bruno Bayer, one of the German Section, said stiffly, «It is fully understood that No. 1 will be in immediate control in Area Zeta. Is it correct that he will have full powers delegated by yourself? Is it that he will, so to speak, be Supreme Commander in the field?»
How typical, thought Blofeld. The Germans will always obey orders, but they wish to be quite clear where final authority resides. The German generals would only obey the Supreme Command if they knew Hitler approved the Supreme Command. He said firmly, «I have made it clear to the Special Executive, and I repeat: No. 1 is already, by your unanimous vote, my successor in case of my death or incapacity. So far as Plan Omega is concerned, he is deputy Supreme Commander of SPECTRE, and since I shall remain at Headquarters to keep watch over reactions to the Letter, No. 1 will be Supreme Commander in the field. His orders will be obeyed as if they were my own. I hope we are fully agreed in this matter.» Blofeld's eyes, sharply focused, swept the meeting. Everyone signified his agreement.
«So,» said Blofeld. «Then the meeting is now closed. I will instruct the disposal squad to take care of the remains of No. 12. No. 18, please connect me with No. 1 on 20 megacycles. That waveband will have been unoccupied by the French Post Office since eight o'clock.»
7. «Fasten Your Lap-Strap»
James Bond scraped the last dregs of yoghurt out of the bottom of the carton that said: « Goat-milk culture. From our own Goat Farm at Stanway, Glos. The Heart of the Cotswolds. According to an authentic Bulgarian recipe .» He took an Energen roll, sliced it carefully–they are apt to crumble–and reached for the black treacle. He masticated each mouthful thoroughly. Saliva contains ptyalin. Thorough mastication creates ptyalin which helps to convert starches into sugar to supply energy for the body. Ptyalin is an enzyme. Other enzymes are pepsin, found in the stomach, and trypsin and erepsin, found in the intestine. These and other enzymes are chemical substances that break up the food as it passes through the mouth, the stomach, and the digestive tract and help absorb it directly into the blood stream. James Bond now had all these important facts at his fingertips. He couldn't understand why no one had told him these things before. Since leaving Shrublands ten days before, he had never felt so well in his life. His energy had doubled. Even the paper work he had always found an intolerable drudgery was now almost a pleasure. He ate it up. Sections, after a period of being only surprised, were now becoming slightly irritated by the forceful, clear-headed minutes that came shooting back at them from the Double-O Section. Bond awoke so early and so full of beans that he had taken to arriving at his office early and leaving late, much to the irritation of his secretary, the delectable Loelia Ponsonby, who found her own private routines being put seriously out of joint. She also was beginning to show signs of irritation and strain. She had even taken upon herself to have a private word with Miss Moneypenny, M's private secretary and her best friend in the building. Miss Moneypenny, swallowing her jealousy of Loelia Ponsonby, had been encouraging. «It's all right, Lil,» she had said over coffee in the canteen. «The Old Man was like that for a couple of weeks after he had got back from that damned nature-cure place. It was like working for Gandhi or Schweitzer or someone. Then a couple of bad cases came up and rattled him and one evening he went to Blades–to take his mind off things I suppose–and the next day he felt awful, and looked it, and from then on he's been all right again. I suppose he got back on the champagne cure or something. It's really the best for men. It makes them awful, but at least they're human like that. It's when they get godlike one can't stand them.»
May, Bond's elderly Scottish treasure, came in to clear the breakfast things away. Bond had lit up a Duke of Durham, king-size, with filter. The authoritative Consumers Union of America rates this cigarette the one with the smallest tar and nicotine content. Bond had transferred to the brand from the fragrant but powerful Morland Balkan mixture with three gold rings round the paper that he had been smoking since his teens. The Dukes tasted of almost nothing, but they were at least better than Vanguards, the new «tobaccoless» cigarette from America that, despite its health-protecting qualities, filled the room with a faint «burning leaves» smell that made visitors to his office inquire whether something was on fire somewhere.
May was fiddling about with the breakfast things–her signal that she had something to say. Bond looked up from the center news page of The Times . «Anything on your mind, May?»
May's elderly, severe features were flushed. She said defensively, «I have that.» She looked straight at Bond. She was holding the yoghurt carton in her hand. She crumpled it in her strong fingers and dropped it among the breakfast things on the tray. «It's not my place to say it, Mister James, but ye're poisoning yersel'.»
Bond said cheerfully, «I know, May. You're quite right. But at least I've got them down to ten a day.»
«I'm not talking about yer wee bitty smoke. I'm talking 'bout this–» May gestured at the tray–»this pap.» The word was spat out with disdain. Having got this off her chest, May gathered steam. «It's no recht for a man to be eating bairns' food and slops and suchlike. Ye needn't worry that I'll talk, Mister James, but I'm knowing more about yer life than mebbe ye were wishing I did. There's been times when they're brought ye home from hospital and there's talk you've been in a motoring accident or some such. But I'm not the old fule ye think I am, Mister James. Motoring accidents don't make one small hole in yer shoulder or yer leg or somewhere. Why, ye've got scars on ye the noo–ach, ye needn't grin like that, I've seen them–that could only be made by buellets. And these guns and knives and things ye carry around when ye're off abroad. Ach!»
May put her hands on her hips. Her eyes were bright and defiant. «Ye can tell me to mind my ain business and pack me off back to Glen Orchy, but before I go I'm telling ye, Mister James, that if ye get yerself into anuither fight and ye've got nothing but yon muck in yer stomach, they'll be bringing ye home in a hearse. That's what they'll be doing.»
In the old days, James Bond would have told May to go to hell and leave him in peace. Now, with infinite patience and good humor, he gave May a quick run through the basic tenets of «live» as against «dead» foods. «You see, May,» he said reasonably, «all these de-naturized foods–white flour, white sugar, white rice, white salts, whites of egg–these are dead foods. Either they're dead anyway like whites of egg or they've had all the nourishment refined out of them. They're slow poisons, like fried foods and cakes and coffee and heaven knows how many of the things I used to eat. And anyway, look how wonderfully well I am. I feel absolutely a new man since I took to eating the right things and gave up drink and so on. I sleep twice as well. I've got twice as much energy. No headaches. No muscle pains. NO hangovers. Why, a month ago there wasn't a week went by but that on at least one day I couldn't eat anything for breakfast but a couple of aspirins and a prairie oyster. And you know quite well that that used to make you cluck and tut-tut all over the place like an old hen. Well»–Bond raised his eyebrows amiably–»what about that?»
May was defeated. She picked up the tray and, with a stiff back made for the door. She paused on the threshold and turned round. Her eyes were bright with angry tears. «Well, all I can say is, Mr. James, that mebbe ye're right and mebbe ye're wrong. What worries the life out of me is that ye're not yersel' any more.» She went out and banged the door.
Bond sighed and picked up the paper. He said the magical words that all men say when a middle-aged woman makes a temperamental scene, «change of life,» and went back to reading about the latest reasons for not having a Summit meeting.
The telephone, the red one that was the direct line with Headquarters, gave its loud, distinctive jangle. Bond kept his eyes on the page and reached out a hand. With the Cold War easing off, it was not like the old days. This would be nothing exciting. Probably canceling his shoot at Bisley that afternoon with the new F.N. rifle.
«Bond speaking.»
It was the Chief of Staff. Bond dropped his paper on the floor. He pressed the receiver to his ear, trying, as in the old days, to read behind the words.
«At once please, James. M.»
«Something for me?»
«Something for everyone. Crash dive, and ultra hush. If you've got any dates for the next few weeks, better cancel them. You'll be off tonight. See you.» The line went dead.
***
Bond had the most selfish car in England. It was a Mark II Continental Bentley that some rich idiot had married to a telegraph pole on the Great West Road. Bond had bought the bits for £1500 and Rolls had straightened the bend in the chassis and fitted new clockwork–the Mark IV engine with 9.5 compression. Then Bond had gone to Mulliners with £3000, which was half his total capital, and they had sawn off the old cramped sports saloon body and had fitted a trim, rather square convertible two-seater affair, power-operated, with only two large armed bucket seats in black leather. The rest of the blunt end was all knife-edged, rather ugly, trunk. The car was painted in rough, not gloss, battleship gray and the upholstery was black morocco. She went like a bird and a bomb and Bond loved her more than all the women at present in his life rolled, if that were feasible, together.
But Bond refused to be owned by any car. A car, however splendid, was a means of locomotion (he called the Continental «the locomotive». . . «I'll pick you up in my locomotive») and it must at all times be ready to locomote–no garage doors to break one's nails on, no pampering with mechanics except for the quick monthly service. The locomotive slept out of doors in front of his flat and was required to start immediately, in all weathers, and, after that, stay on the road.
The twin exhausts–Bond had demanded two-inch pipes; he hadn't liked the old soft flutter of the marque–growled solidly as the long gray nose topped by a big octagonal silver bolt instead of the winged B, swerved out of the little Chelsea square and into King's Road. It was nine o'clock, too early for the bad traffic, and Bond pushed the car fast up Sloane Street and into the park. It would also be too early for the traffic police, so he did some fancy driving that brought him to the Marble Arch exit in three minutes flat. Then there came the slow round-the-houses into Baker Street and so into Regents Park. Within ten minutes of getting the Hurry call he was going up in the lift of the big square building to the eighth and top floor.
Already, as he strode down the carpeted corridor, he smelled emergency. On this floor, besides M's offices, was housed Communications, and from behind the gray closed doors there came a steady zing and crackle from the banks of transmitters and a continuous machine-gun rattle and clack from the cipher machines. It crossed Bond's mind that a General Call was going out. What the hell had happened?
The Chief of Staff was standing over Miss Moneypenny. He was handing her signals from a large sheaf and giving her, routing instructions. «CIA Washington, Personal for Dulles. Cipher Triple X by Teleprinter. Mathis, Deuxième Bureau. Same prefix and route. Station F for Head of NATO Intelligence. Personal. Standard route through Head of Section. This one by Safe Hand to Head of M.I.5, Personal, copy to Commissioner of Police, Personal, and these»–he handed over a thick batch–»Personal to Heads of Stations from M. Cipher Double X by Whitehall Radio and Portishead. All right? Clear them as quick as you can, there's a good girl. There'll be more coming. We're in for a bad day.»
Miss Moneypenny smiled cheerfully. She liked what she called the shot-and-shell days. It reminded her of when she had started in the Service as a junior in the Cipher Department. She leaned over and pressed the switch on the intercom, «007's here, sir.» She looked up at Bond. «You're off.» The Chief of Staff grinned and said, «Fasten your lap-strap.» The red light went on above M's door. Bond walked through.
Here it was entirely peaceful. M sat relaxed, sideways to his desk looking out of the broad window at the distant glittering fretwork of London's skyline. He glanced up. «Sit down, 007. Have a look at these.» He reached out and slid some foolscap-sized photostats across the desk. «Take your time.» He picked up his pipe and began to fill it, absent-minded fingers dipping into the shell-base tobacco jar at his elbow.
Bond picked up the top photostat. It showed the front and back of an addressed envelope, dusted for fingerprints, which were all over its surface.
M glanced sideways. «Smoke if you like.»
Bond said, «Thanks, sir. I'm trying to give it up.»
M said, «Humpf,» put his pipe in his mouth, struck a match, and inhaled a deep lungful of smoke. He settled himself deeper in his chair. The gray sailor's eyes gazed through the window introspectively, seeing nothing.
The envelope, prefixed «PERSONAL AND MOST IMMEDIATE,» was addressed to the Prime Minister, by name, at No. 10, Downing Street, Whitehall, London, sw1. Every detail of the address was correct down to the final «P.C.» to denote that the Prime Minister was a Privy Councillor. The punctuation was meticulous. The stamp was postmarked Brighton, 8:30 a.m. on June 3. It crossed Bond's mind that the letter might therefore have been posted under cover of night and that it would probably have been delivered some time in the early afternoon of the same day, yesterday. A typewriter with a bold, rather elegant type had been used. This fact, together with the generous 5-by-7 ½-inch envelope and the spacing and style of the address, gave a solid, businesslike impression. The back of the envelope showed nothing but fingerprints. There was no sealing wax.
The letter, equally correct and well laid out, ran as follows:
***
Mr Prime Minister,
You should be aware, or you will be if you communicate with the Chief of the Air Staff, that, since approximately 10 p.m. yesterday, 2nd June, a British aircraft carrying two atomic weapons is overdue on a training flight. The aircraft is Villiers Vindicator O/NBR from No. 5 R.A.F. Experimental Squadron based at Boscombe Down. The Ministry of Supply Identification Numbers on the atomic weapons are MOS/bd/654/Mk V. and MOS/ bd/655/Mk V. There are also U.S.A.F. Identification Numbers in such profusion and of such prolixity that I will not weary you with them.
This aircraft was on a NATO training flight with a crew or five and one observer. It carried sufficient fuel for ten hours' flying at 600 m.p.h. at a mean altitude of 40,000 feet.
This aircraft, together with the two atomic weapons, is now in the possession of this organization. The crew and the observer are deceased and you have our authority to inform the next-of-kin accordingly, thus assisting you in preserving, on the grounds that the aircraft has crashed, the degree of secrecy you will no doubt wish to maintain and which will be equally agreeable to ourselves. The whereabouts of this aircraft and of the two atomic weapons, rendering them possible of recovery, will be communicated to you in exchange for the equivalent of £100,000,000 in gold bullion, one thousand, or not less than nine hundred and ninety-nine, fine. Instructions for the delivery of the gold are contained in the attached memorandum. A further condition is that the recovery and disposal of the gold will not be hampered and that a free pardon, under your personal signature and that of the President of the United States, will be issued in the name of this organization and all its members.
Failure to accept these conditions within seven days from 5 p.m. G.M.T. on June 3rd, 1959–i.e. not later than 5 p.m. G.M.T. on June 10th, 1959–will have the following consequences. Immediately after that date a piece of property belonging to the Western Powers, valued at not less than the aforesaid £100,000,000, will be destroyed. There will be loss of life. If, within 48 hours after this warning, willingness to accept our terms is still not communicated, there will ensue, without further warning, the destruction of a major city situated in an undesignated country of the world. There will be very great loss of life. Moreover, between the two occurrences, this organization will reserve to itself the right to communicate to the world the 48-hour time limit. This measure, which will cause widespread panic in every major city, will be designed to hasten your hand.
This, Mr. Prime Minister, is a single and final communication. We shall await your reply, every hour on the hour G.M.T., on the 16-megacycle waveband.
Signed
S.P.E.C.T.R.E.
(The Special Executive for Counterintelligence, Terrorism, Revenge, and Extortion)
***
James Bond read through the letter again and put it carefully down on the desk in front of him. He then turned to the second page, a detailed memorandum for the delivery of the gold. «Northwestern slopes of Mount Etna in Sicily . . . Decca Navigational Aid transmitting on ... Full moon period . . . between midnight and 0100 G.M.T . . . individual quarter-ton consignments packed in one-foot-thick foam rubber . . . minimum of three parachutes per consignment . . . nature of planes and flight schedule to be communicated on the 16-megacycle waveband not later than 24 hours before the operation . . . Any counter-measures initiated will be considered a breach of contract and will result in the detonation of Atomic Weapon No. 1 or No. 2 as the case may be.» The typed signature was the same. Both pages had one last line: «Copy to the President of the United States of America, by Registered Airmail, posted simultaneously.»
Bond laid the photostat quietly down on top of the others. He reached into his hip pocket for the gunmetal cigarette case that now contained only nine cigarettes, took one, and lit it, drawing the smoke deep down into his lungs and letting it out with a long, reflective hiss.
M swiveled his chair round so they were facing each other. «Well?»
Bond noticed that M's eyes, three weeks before so clear and vital, were now bloodshot and strained. No wonder! He said, «If this plane, and the weapons, really are missing, I think it stands up, sir. I think they mean it. I think it's a true bill.»
M said, «So does the War Cabinet. So do I.» He paused. «Yes, the plane with the bombs is missing. And the stock numbers on the bombs are correct.»
8. «Big Fleas Have Little Fleas . . .»
Bond said, «What is there to go on, sir?»
«Damned little, practically speaking nothing. Nobody's ever heard of these SPECTRE people. We know there's some kind of independent unit working in Europe–we've bought some stuff from them, so have the Americans, and Mathis admits now that Goltz, that French heavy-water scientist who went over last year, was assassinated by them, for big money, as a result of an offer he got out of the blue. No names were mentioned. It was all done on the radio, the same 16 megacycles that's mentioned in the letter. To the Deuxième Communications section. Mathis accepted on the off-chance. They did a neat job. Mathis paid up–a suitcase full of money left at a Michelin road sign on N1. But no one can tie them in with these SPECTRE people. When we and the Americans dealt, there were endless cutouts, really professional ones, and anyway we were more interested in the end product than the people involved. We both paid a lot of money, but it was worth it. If it's the same group working this, they're a serious outfit and I've told the P.M. so. But that's not the point. The plane is missing and the two bombs, just as the letter says. All details exactly correct. The Vindicator was on a NATO training flight south of Ireland and out into the Atlantic.» M reached for a bulky folder and turned over some pages. He found what he wanted. «Yes, it was to be a six-hour flight leaving Boscombe Down at eight p.m. and due back at two a.m. There was an R.A.F. crew of five and a NATO observer, an Italian, man called Petacchi, Giuseppi Petacchi, squadron leader in the Italian Air Force, seconded to NATO. Fine flyer, apparently, but they're checking on his background now. He was sent over here on a normal tour of duty. The top pilots from NATO have been coming over for months to get used to the Vindicator and the bomb-release routines. This plane's apparently going to be used for the NATO long-range striking force. Anyway»–M turned over a page–»the plane was watched on the screen as usual and all went well until it was west of Ireland at about forty thousand feet. Then, contrary to the drill, it came down to around thirty thousand and got lost in the transatlantic air traffic. Bomber Command tried to get in touch, but the radio couldn't or wouldn't answer. The immediate reaction was that the Vindicator had hit one of the transatlantic planes and there was something of a panic. But none of the companies reported any trouble or even a sighting.» M looked across at Bond. «And that was the end of it. The plane just vanished.»
Bond said, «Did the American DEW line pick it up–their Defense Early Warning system?»
«There's a query on that. The only grain of evidence we've got. Ap» parently about five hundred miles east of Boston there was some evidence that a plane had peeled off the inward route to Idlewild and turned south. But that's another big traffic lane–for the northern traffic from Montreal and Gander down to Bermuda and the Bahamas and South America. So these DEW operators just put it down as a B.O.A.C. or Trans-Canada plane.» «It certainly sounds as if they've got the whole thing worked out pretty well, hiding in these traffic lanes. Could the plane have turned northwards in the middle of the Atlantic and made for Russia?»
«Yes, or southwards. There's a big block of space about five hundred miles out from both shores that's out of radar range. Better still, it could have turned on its tracks and come back in to Europe on any of two or three air lanes. In fact it could be almost anywhere in the world by now. That's the point.»
«But it's a huge plane. It must need special runways and so on. It must have come down somewhere. You can't hide a plane of that size.»
«Just so. All these things are obvious. By midnight last night the R.A.F. had checked with every single airport, every one in the world that could have taken it. Negative. But the C.A.S. says of course it could be crash-landed in the Sahara, for instance, or on some other desert, or in the sea, in shallow water.»
«Wouldn't that explode the bombs?»
«No. They're absolutely safe until they're armed. Apparently even a direct drop, like that one from the B-47 over North Carolina in 1958, would only explode the T.N.T. trigger to the thing. Not the plutonium.»
«How are these SPECTRE people going to explode them, then?»
M spread his hands. «They explained all this at the War Cabinet meeting. I don't understand it all, but apparently an atomic bomb looks just like any other bomb. The way it works is that the nose is full of ordinary T.N.T. with the plutonium in the tail. Between the two there's a hole into which you screw some sort of a detonator, a kind of plug. When the bomb hits, the T.N.T. ignites the detonator and the detonator sets off the plutonium.»
«So these people would have to drop the bomb to set it off?» Apparently not. They would need a man with good physics knowledge who understood the thing, but then all he'd have to do would be to unscrew the nose cone on the bomb–the ordinary detonator that sets off the T.N.T.–and fix on some kind of time fuse that would ignite the T.N.T. without it being dropped. That would set the thing off. And it's not a very bulky affair. You could get the whole thing into something only about twice the size of a big golf bag. Very heavy, of course. But you could put it into the back of a big car, for instance, and just run the car into a town and leave it parked with the time fuse switched on. Give yourself a couple of hours' start to get out of range–at least a hundred miles away–and that would be that.»
Bond reached in his pocket for another cigarette. It couldn't be, yet it was so. Just what his Service and all the other intelligence services in the world had been expecting to happen. The anonymous little man in the raincoat with a heavy suitcase–or golf bag, if you like. The left luggage office, the parked car, the clump of bushes in a park in the center of a big town. And there was no answer to it. In a few years' time, if the experts were right, there would be even less answer to it. Every tin-pot little nation would be making atomic bombs in their backyards, so to speak. Apparently there was no secret now about the things. It had only been the prototypes that had been difficult–like the first gunpowder weapons for instance, or machine guns or tanks. Today these were everybody's bows and arrows. Tomorrow, or the day after, the bows and arrows would be atomic bombs. And this was the first blackmail case. Unless SPECTRE was stopped, the word would get round and soon every criminal scientist with a chemical set and some scrap iron would be doing it. If they couldn't be stopped in time there would be nothing for it but to pay up. Bond said so.
«That's about it,» commented M. «From every point of view, including politics, not that they matter all that much. But neither the P.M. nor the President would last five minutes if anything went wrong. But whether we pay or don't pay, the consequences will be endless–and all bad. That's why absolutely everything has got to be done to find these people and the plane and stop the thing in time. The P.M. and the President are entirely agreed. Every intelligence man all over the world who's on our side is being put on to this operation–Operation Thunderball they're calling it. Planes, ships, submarines–and of course money's no object. We can have everything, whenever we want it. The Cabinet have already set up a special staff and a war room. Every scrap of information will be fed into it. The Americans have done the same. Some kind of a leak can't be helped. It's being put about that all the panic, and it is panic, is because of the loss of the Vindicator–bombs included, whatever fuss that may cause politically. Only the letter will be absolutely secret. All the usual detective work–fingerprints, Brighton, writing paper–these'll be looked after by Scotland Yard with the F.B.I., Interpol, and all the NATO intelligence organizations, helping where they can. Only a segment of the paper and the typing will be used–a few innocent words. This will all be quite separate from the search for the plane. That'll be handled as a top espionage matter. No one should be able to connect the two investigations. M.I.5 will handle the background to all the crew members and the Italian observer. That will be a natural part of the search for the plane. As for the Service, we've teamed up with the C.I.A. to cover the world. Alien Dulles is putting every man he's got onto it and so am I. Just sent out a General Call. Now all we can do is sit back and wait.»
Bond lit another cigarette, his sinful third in one hour. He said, putting unconcern into his voice, «Where do I come in, sir?»
M looked vaguely at Bond, as if seeing him for the first time. Then he swiveled his chair and gazed again through the window at nothing. finally he said, in a conversational tone of voice, «I have committed a breach of faith with the P.M. in telling you all this, 007. I was under oath to tell no one what I have just told you. I decided to do what I have done because I have an idea, a hunch, and I wish this idea to be pursued by a»–he hesitated–»by a reliable man. It seemed to me that the only grain of possible evidence in this case was the DEW radar plot, a doubtful one I admit, of the plane that left the east-west air channel over the Atlantic and turned south towards Bermuda and the Bahamas. I decided to accept this evidence, although it has not aroused much interest elsewhere. I then spent some time studying a map and charts of the Western Atlantic and I endeavored to put myself in the minds of SPECTRE–or rather, for there is certainly a master mind behind all this, in the mind of the chief of SPECTRE : my opposite number, so to speak. And I came to certain conclusions. I decided that a favorable target for Bomb. No. 1, and for Bomb No. 2, if it comes to that, would be in America rather than in Europe. To begin with, the Americans are more bomb-conscious than we in Europe and therefore more susceptible to persuasion if it came to using Bomb No. 2. Installations worth more than £100,000,000, and thus targets for Bomb No. 1, are more numerous in America than in Europe, and finally, guessing that SPECTRE is a European organization, from the style of the letter and from the paper, which is Dutch by the way, and also from the ruthlessness of the plot, it seemed to me at least possible that an Amerrican rather than a European target might have been chosen. Anyway, going on these assumptions, and assuming that the plane could not nave landed in America itself or off American shores–the coastal radar network is too good–I looked for a neighboring area which might be suitable. And»–M glanced round at Bond and away again–»I decided on the Bahamas, the group of islands, many of them uninhabited, surrounded mostly by shoal water over sand and possessing only one simple radar station–and that one concerned only with civilian air traffic and manned by local civilian personnel. South, towards Cuba, Jamaica, and the Caribbean, offers no worthwhile targets. Anyway it is too far from the American coastline. Northwards towards Bermuda has the same disadvantages. But the nearest of the Bahama group is only two hundred miles–only six or seven hours in a fast motorboat or yacht–from the American coastline.»
Bond interrupted. «If you're right, sir, why didn't SPECTRE send their letter to the President instead of the P.M.?»
«For the sake of obscurity. To make us do what we are doing–hunting all round the world instead of only in one part of it. And for maximum impact. SPECTRE would realize that the arrival of the letter right on top of the loss of the bomber would hit us in the solar plexus. It might, they would reason, even shake the money out of us without any further effort. The next stage of their operation, attacking target No. 1, is going to be a nasty business for them. It's going to expose their whereabouts to a considerable extent. They'd like to collect the money and close the operation as quickly as possible. That's what we've got to gamble on. We've got to push them as close to the use of No. 1 bomb as we dare in the hope that something will betray them in the next six and three-quarter days. It's a slim chance. I'm pinning my hopes on my guess»–M swung his chair round to the desk–»and on you. Well?» He looked hard at Bond. «Any comments? If not, you'd better get started. You're booked on all New York planes from now until midnight. Then on by B.O.A.C. I thought of. using an R.A.F. Canberra, but I don't want your arrival to make any noise. You're a rich young man looking for some property in the islands. That'll give you an excuse to do as much prospecting as you want. Well?»
«All right, sir.» Bond got to his feet. «I'd rather have had somewhere more interesting–the Iron Curtain beat, for instance. I can't help feeling this is a bigger operation than a small unit could take on. For my money this looks more like a Russian job. They get the experimental plane and the bombs–they obviously want them–and throw dust in our eyes with all this SPECTRE ballyhoo. If SMERSH was still in business, I'd say they'd got a finger in it somewhere. Just their style. But the Eastern Stations may pick up something on that if there's anything in the idea. Anything else, sir? Who do I cooperate with in Nassau?»
«The Governor knows you're coming. They've got a well-trained police force. C.I.A. are sending down a good man, I gather. With a communications outfit. They've got more of that sort of machinery than we have. Take a cipher machine with the Triple X setting. I want to hear every single detail you turn up. Personal to me. Right?»
«Right, sir.» Bond went to the door and let himself out. There was nothing more to be said. This looked like the biggest job the Service had ever been given, and in Bond's opinion, for he didn't give much for M's guess, he had been relegated to the back row of the chorus. So be it. He would get himself a good sunburn and watch the show from the wings.
When Bond walked out of the building, carrying the neat leather cipher case, an expensive movie camera perhaps, slung over his shoulder, the man in the beige Volkswagen stopped scratching the burn-scab under his shirt, loosened, for the tenth time, the long-barrelled .45 in the holster under his arm, started the car, and put it in gear. He was twenty yards behind Bond's parked Bentley. He had no idea what the big building was. He had simply obtained Bond's home address from the receptionist at Shrublands and, as soon as he got out of the Brighton hospital, he had carefully tailed Bond. The car was hired, under an assumed name. When he had done what had to be done he would go straight to London Airport and take the first plane out to any country on the Continent. Count Lippe was a sanguine individual. The job, the private score he had to settle, presented no problem to him. He was a ruthless, vengeful man and he had eliminated many obstreperous and perhaps dangerous people in his life. He reasoned that, if they every came to hear of this, SPECTRE would not object. The overheard telephone conversation on that first day at the clinic showed that his cover had been broached, however slightly, and it was just conceivable that he could be traced through his membership in the Red Lightning Tong, From there to SPECTRE was a long step, but Sub-operator G knew that once a cover began to run, it ran like an old sock. Apart from that, this man must be paid off. Count Lippe had to be quits with him.
Bond was getting into his car. He had slammed the door. Sub-operator G watched the blue smoke curl from the twin exhausts. He got moving.
On the other side of the road, and a hundred yards behind the Volkswagen SPECTRE No. 6 slipped his goggles down over his eyes, stamped the 500-c.c. Triumph into gear, and accelerated down the road. He swerved neatly through the traffic–he had been a test rider for D.K.W. at one time in his postwar career–and stationed himself ten yards behind the off rear wheel of the Volkswagen and just out of the driver's line of vision in the windscreen mirror. He had no idea why Sub-operator G was following the Bentley, nor whom the Bentley belonged to, His job was to kill the driver of the Volkswagen. He put his hand into the leather satchel he carried slung over his shoulder, took out the heavy grenade–it was twice the normal military size–and watched the traffic ahead for the right pattern to allow his getaway.
Sub-operator G was watching for a similar pattern. He also noted the spacing on the lampposts on the pavement in case he might be blocked and have to run off the road. Now the cars ahead were sparse. He stamped his foot into the floor and, driving with his left hand, drew out the Colt with his right. Now he was up with the Bentley's rear bumper. Now he was alongside. The dark profile was a sitting target. With a last quick glance ahead, he raised the gun.
It was the cheeky iron rattle of the Volkswagen's air-cooled engine that made Bond turn his head, and it was this minute reduction of the target area that saved his jaw. If he had then accelerated, the second bullet would have got him, but some blessed instinct made his foot stamp the brake at the same time as his head ducked so swiftly that his chin hit the horn button, nearly knocking him out. Almost simultaneously, instead of a third shot, there came the roar of an explosion and the remains of his windshield, already shattered, cascaded around him. The Bentley had stopped, the engine stalled. Brakes screamed. There were shouts and the panicky screams of horns. Bond shook his head and cautiously raised it. The Volkswagen, one wheel still spinning lay on its side in front and broadside to the Bentley. Most of the roof had been blown off. Inside, and half sprawling into the road, was a horrible, glinting mess. Flames were licking at the blistered paintwork. People were gathering. Bond pulled himself together and got quickly out of his car. He shouted, «Stand back. The petrol tank'll go.» Almost as he said the words there came a dull boom and a cloud of black smoke. The flames spurted, In the distance, sirens sounded. Bond edged through the people and strode quickly back toward his headquarters, his thoughts racing.
The inquiry made Bond lose two planes to New York. By the time the police had put out the fire and had transported the bits of man and the bits of machinery and bomb casing to the morgue it was quite clear that they would have nothing to go on but the shoes, the number on the gun, some fibers and shreds of clothing, and the car. The car-hire people remembered nothing but a man with dark glasses, a driver's license in the name of Johnston, and a handful of fivers. The car had been hired three days before for one week. Plenty of people remembered the motorcyclist, but it seemed that he had no rear number plate. He had gone like a bat out of hell toward Baker Street. He wore goggles. Medium build. Nothing else.
Bond had not been able to help. He had seen nothing of the Volkswagen driver. The roof of the Volkswagen had been too low. There had only been a hand and the glitter of a gun.
The Secret Service asked for a copy of the police report and M instructed that this should be sent to the Thunderball war room. He saw Bond briefly again, rather impatiently, as if it had all been Bond's fault. Then he told Bond to forget about it–it was probably something to do with one of his past cases. A hangover of some kind. The police would get to the bottom of it in time. The main thing was operation Thunderball . Bond had better get a move on.
By the time Bond left the building for the second time, it had begun to rain. One of the mechanics from the car pool at the back of the building had done what he could, knocking out the remains of the Bentley's windscreen and cleaning the bits out of the car, but when he got home at lunch time Bond was soaked to the skin. He left the car in a nearby garage, telephoned Rolls and his insurance company (he had got too close to a lorry carrying steel lengths, for reinforced concrete presumably. No, he had not got the lorry's number. Sorry, but you know how it is when these things happen all of a sudden), and then went home and had a bath and changed into his dark blue tropical worsted. He packed carefully–one large suitcase and a hold-all for his underwater swimming gear–and went through to the kitchen.
May was looking rather contrite. It seemed as if she might make another speech. Bond held up his hand. «Don't tell me, May. You were right. I can't do my work on carrot juice. I've got to be off in an hour and I need some proper food. Be an angel and make me your kind of scrambled eggs–four eggs. Four rashers of that American hickory-smoked bacon if we've got any left, hot buttered toast–your kind, not whole-meal–and a big pot of coffee, double strength. And bring in the drink tray.»
May looked at him, relieved but aghast. «Whatever happened, Mr. James?»
Bond laughed at the expression on her face. «Nothing, May. It just occurred to me that life's too short. Plenty of time to watch the calories when one gets to heaven.»
Bond left May tut-tutting at this profanity, and went off to look to his armament.
9. Multiple Requiem
So far as SPECTRE was concerned, Plan Omega had gone exactly as Blofeld had known it would and Phases I to III in their entirety had been completed on schedule and without a hitch.
Giuseppe Petacchi, the late Giuseppe Petacchi, had been well chosen. At the age of eighteen he had been co-pilot of a Fockewulf 200 from the Adriatic anti-submarine patrol, one of the few hand-picked Italian airmen who had been allowed to handle these German planes. The group was issued with the latest German pressure mines charged with the new Hexogen explosive just when the tide had turned in the Allied battle up the spine of Italy. Petacchi had known where his destiny lay and had gone into business for himself. On a routine patrol, he had shot the pilot and the navigator, very carefully, with one .38 bullet in the back of the head for each of them, and had brought the big plane skimming in, just above the waves to avoid the antiaircraft fire, to the harbor of Bari. Then he had hung his shirt out of the cockpit as a token of surrender and had waited for the R.A.F. launch. He had been decorated by the English and the Americans for this exploit and had been awarded £10,000 from special funds for his presentation to the Allies of the pressure mine. He had told a highly colored story to the Intelligence people of having been a one-man resistance ever since he had been old enough to join the Italian Air Force, and he emerged at the end of the war as one of Italy's most gallant resistance heroes. From then on life had been easy–pilot and later captain in Alitalia when it got going again, and then back into the new Italian Air Force as colonel. His secondment to NATO followed and then his appointment as one of the six Italians chosen for the Advance Striking Force. But he was now thirty-four, and it occurred to him that he had had just about enough of flying. He especially did not care for the idea of being part of the spearhead of NATO defenses. It was time for younger men to provide the heroics. And all his life he had had a passion for owning things–flashy, exciting, expensive things. He had most of what he desired–a couple of gold cigarette cases, a solid gold Rolex Oyster Perpetual Chronometer on a flexible gold bracelet, a white convertible Lancia Gran Turismo, plenty of sharp clothes, and all the girls he wanted (he had once been briefly married but it had not been a success). Now he desired, and what he desired he often got, a particular Ghia-bodied 3500 G.T. Maserati he had seen at the Milan motor show. He also wanted Out–out of the pale green corridors of NATO, out of the Air Force, and, therefore, off to new worlds with a new name. Rio de Janeiro sounded just right. But all this meant a new passport, plenty of money, and «organismo»–the vital «organismo.»
The organismo turned up, and turned up bearing just those gifts that Petacchi lusted for. It came in the shape of an Italian named Fonda who was at that time No. 4 in SPECTRE and who had been casing the personnel of NATO, via Versailles and Paris night clubs and restaurants, for just such a man. It had taken one whole very careful month to prepare the bait and inch it forward toward the fish and, when it was finally presented, No. 4 had been almost put off by the greed with which it had been gobbled. There was delay while the possibility of a double-cross was probed by SPECTRE, but finally all the lights were green and the full proposition was laid out for inspection. Petacchi was to get on the Vindicator training course and highjack the plane. (There was no mention of atomic weapons. This was a Cuban revolutionary group who wanted to call attention to its existence and aims by a dramatic piece of self-advertisement. Petacchi closed his ears to this specious tale. He didn't mind in the least who wanted the plane so long as he was paid.) In exchange, Petacchi would receive $1,000,000, a new passport in any name and nationality he chose, and immediate onward passage from the point of delivery to Rio de Janeiro. Many details were discussed and perfected, and when, at eight o'clock in the evening of that June 2nd, the Vindicator screamed off down the runway and out over St. Alban's Head, Petacchi was tense but confident.
For the training flights, a couple of ordinary civil aircraft seats had been fixed inside the roomy fuselage just back of the large cockpit, and Petacchi sat quietly for a whole hour and watched the five men at work at the crowded dials and instruments. When it came to his turn to fly the plane he was quite satisfied that he could dispense with all five of them. Once he had set George, there would be nothing to do but stay awake and make certain from time to time that he was keeping exactly at 32,000 feet, just above the transatlantic air channel. There would be a tricky moment when he turned off the east-west channel on to the North-South for the Bahamas, but this had all been worked out for him and every move he would have to make was written down in the notebook in his breast pocket. The landing was going to need very steady nerves, but for $1,000,000 the steady nerves would be summoned.
For the tenth time Petacchi consulted the Rolex. Now! He verified and tested the oxygen mask in the bulkhead beside him and laid it down ready. Next he took the little red-ringed cylinder out of his pocket and remembered exactly how many turns to give the release valve. Then he put it back in his pocket and went through into the cockpit.
«Hullo, Seppy. Enjoying the flight?» The pilot liked the Italian. They had gone out together on one or two majestic thrashes in Bournemouth.
«Sure, sure.» Petacchi asked some questions, verified the course set on George, checked the air speed and altitude. Now everyone in the cockpit was relaxed, almost drowsy. Five more hours to go. Rather a bind missing North by Northwest at the Odeon. But one would catch up with it at Southampton. Petacchi stood with his back to the metal map rack that held the log and the charts. His right hand went to his pocket, felt for the release valve, and gave it three complete turns. He eased the cylinder out of his pocket and slipped it behind him and down behind the books.
Petacchi stretched and yawned. «Is time for a zizz,» he said amiably. He had got the slang phrase pat. It rolled easily off the tongue.
The navigator laughed. «What do they call it in Italian–Zizzo?»
Petacchi grinned cheerfully. He went through the open hatch, got back to his chair, clamped on his oxygen mask, and turned the control regulator to 100 per cent oxygen to cut out the air bleed. Then he made himself comfortable and watched.
They had said it would take under five minutes. Sure enough, in about two minutes, the man nearest to the map rack, the navigator, suddenly clutched his throat and fell forward, gargling horribly. The radio operator dropped his earphones and started forward, but with his second step he was down on his knees. He lurched sideways and collapsed. Now the three other men began to fight for air, briefly, terribly. The co-pilot and the flight engineer writhed off their stools together. They clawed vaguely at each other and then fell back, spread-eagled. The pilot groped up toward the microphone above his head, said something indistinctly, got half to his feet, turned slowly so that his bulging eyes, already dead, seemed to stare through the hatchway into Petacchi's, and then thudded down on top of the body of his co-pilot.
Petacchi glanced at his watch. Four minutes flat. Give them one more minute. When the minute was up, he took rubber gloves out of his pocket, put them on, and, pressing the oxygen mask tight against his face and trailing the flexible tube behind him, went forward, reached down into the map rack, and closed the valve on the cylinder of cyanide. He verified George and adjusted the cabin pressurization to help clear the poison gas. He then went back to his seat to wait for fifteen minutes.
They had said fifteen would be enough, but at the last moment he gave it another ten and then, still with his oxygen mask on, he went forward again and began slowly, for the oxygen made him rather breathless, to pull the bodies back into the fuselage. When the cockpit was clear, he took a small phial of crystals out of his trousers pocket, took out the cork, and sprinkled the cabin floor with them. He went down on his knees and watched the crystals. They kept their white color. He eased his oxygen mask away and took a small cautious sniff. There was no smell. But still, when he took over the controls and began easing the plane down to 32,000 and then slightly northwest-by-west to get into the traffic lane, he kept the mask on.
The giant plane whispered on into the night. The cockpit, bright with the yellow eyes of the dials, was quiet and warm. In the deafening silence in the cockpit of a big jet in flight there was only the faint buzz of an invector. As he verified the dials, the click of each switch seemed as loud as a small-caliber pistol shot.
Petacchi again checked George with the gyro and verified each fuel tank to see that they were all feeding evenly. One tank pump needed adjustment. The jet-pipe temperatures were not overheating.
Satisfied, Petacchi settled himself comfortably in the pilot's seat and swallowed a benezedrine tablet and thought about the future. One of the headphones scattered on the floor of the cockpit began to chirrup loudly. Petacchi glanced at his watch. Of course! Boscombe Air Traffic Control was trying to raise the Vindicator. He had missed the third of the half-hourly calls. How long would Air Control wait before alerting Air Sea Rescue, Bomber Command, and the Air Ministry? There Would first be checks and double-checks with the Southern Rescue Center. They would probably take another half hour, and by that time he would be well out over the Atlantic.
The chirrup of the headphones went quiet. Petacchi got up from his seat and took a look at the radar screen. He watched it for some time, noting the occasional «blip» of planes being overhauled below him. Would his own swift passage above the air corridor be noted by the planes as he passed above them? Unlikely. The radar on commercial planes has a limited field of vision in a forward cone. He would almost certainly not be spotted until he crossed the Defense Early Warning line, and DEW would probably put him down as a commercial jet that had strayed above its normal channel.
Petacchi went back to the pilot's seat and again minutely checked the dials. He weaved the plane gently to get the feel of the controls. Behind him, the bodies on the floor of the fuselage stirred uneasily. The plane answered perfectly. It was like driving a beautiful quiet motor car. Petacchi dreamed briefly of the Maserati. What color? Better not his usual white, or anything spectacular. Dark blue with a thin red line along the coachwork. Something quiet and respectable that would fit in with his new, quiet identity. It would be fun to run her in some of the trials and road races–even the Mexican «2000.» But that would be too dangerous. Supposing he won and his picture got into the papers! No. He would have to cut out anything like that. He would only drive the car really fast when he wanted to get a girl. They melted in a fast car. Why was that? The sense of surrender to the machine, to the man whose strong, sunburned hands were on the wheel? But it was always so. You turned the car into a wood after ten minutes at 150 and you would almost have to lift the girl out and lay her down on the moss, her limbs would be so trembling and soft.
Petacchi pulled himself out of the daydream. He glanced at his watch. The Vindicator was already four hours out. At 600 m.p.h. one certainly covered the miles. The coastline of America should be on the screen by now. He got up and had a look. Yes, there, 500 miles away, was the coastline map already in high definition, the bulge that was Boston, and the silvery creek of the Hudson River. No need to check his position with weather ships Delta or Echo that would be somewhere below him. He was dead on course and it would soon be time to turn off the East-West channel.
Petacchi went back to his seat, munched another benezedrine tablet, and consulted his chart. He got his hands to the controls and watched the eerie glow of the gyro compass. Now! He eased the controls gently round in a fairly tight curve, then he flattened out again, edged the plane exactly on to its new course, and reset George. Now he was flying due south, now he was on the last lap, a bare three hours to go. It was time to start worrying about the landing.
Petacchi took out his little notebook. «Watch for the lights of Grand Bahama to port, and Palm Beach to starboard. Be ready to pick up the navigational aids from No. 1's yacht–dot-dot-dash; dot-dot-dash, jettison fuel, lose height to around 1000 feet for the last quarter of an hour, kill speed with the air brakes, and lose more height. Watch out for the flashing red beacon and prepare for the final approach. Flaps down only at the check altitude with about 140 knots indicated. Depth of water will be 40 feet. You will have plenty of time to get out of the escape hatch. You will be taken on board No. 1's yacht. There is a Bahamas Airways flight to Miami at 8:30 on the next morning and then Braniff or Real Airlines for the rest of the way. No. 1 will give you the money in 1000-dollar bills or in Travellers Cheques. He will have both available, also the passport in the name of Enrico Valli, Company Director.»
Petacchi checked his position, course, and speed. Only one more hour to go. It was three a.m. G.M.T., nine p.m. Nassau time. A full moon was coming up and the carpet of clouds 10,000 feet below was a snow-field. Petacchi dowsed the collision lights on his wingtips and fuselage. He checked the fuel: 2000 gallons including the reserve tanks. He would need 500 for the last four hundred miles. He pulled the release valve on the reserve tanks and lost 1000 gallons. With the loss of weight the plane began to climb slowly and he corrected back to 32,000. Now there was twenty minutes to go–time to begin the long descent. . . .
***
Down through the cloud base, the moments of blindness and then, far below, the sparse lights of North and South Bimini winked palely against the silver sheen of the moon on the quiet sea. There were no whitecaps. The met. report he had picked up from Vero Beach on the American mainland had been right: «Dead calm, light airs from the northeast, visibility good, no immediate likelihood of change,» and a check on the fainter Nassau Radio had confirmed. The sea looked as smooth and as solid as steel. This was going to be all right. Petacchi dialed Channel 67 on the pilot's command set to pick up No. 1's navigational aid. He had a moment's panic when he didn't hit it at once, but then he got it, faint but clear–dot-dot-dash, dot-dot-dash. It was time to get right down. Petacchi began to kill his speed with the air brakes and cut down the four jets. The great plane began a shallow dive. The radio altimeter became vocal, threatening. Petacchi watched it and the sea of quicksilver below him. He had a moment when the horizon was lost. There was so much reflection off the moonlit water. Then he was on and over a small dark island. It gave him confidence in the 2000 feet indicated on the altimeter. He pulled out of the shallow dive and held the plane steady.
Now No. 1's beacon was coming in loud and clear. Soon he would see the red flashing light. And there it was, perhaps five miles dead ahead. Petacchi inched the great nose of the plane down. Any moment now! It was going to be easy! His fingers played with the controls as delicately as if they were the erotic trigger points on a woman. Five hundred feet, four hundred, three, two . . . There was the pale shape of the yacht, lights dowsed. He was dead on line with the red flash of the beacon. Would he hit it? Never mind. Inch her down, down, down. Be ready to switch off at once. The belly of the plane gave a jolt. Up with the nose! Crash! A leap in the air and then . . . crash again! Petacchi unhinged his cramped fingers from the controls, and gazed numbly out of the window at the foam and small waves. By God he had done it! He, Giuseppe Petacchi, had done it! Now for the applause! Now for the rewards! The plane was settling slowly and there was a hiss of steam from the submerging jets. From behind him came the rip and crack of tearing metal as the tail section gaped open where the back of the plane had broken. Petacchi went through into the fuselage. The water swirled around his feet. The filtering moonlight glittered white on the upturned face of one of the corpses now soggily awash at the rear of the plane. Petacchi broke the perspex cover to the handle of the port side emergency exit and jerked the handle down. The door fell outward and Petacchi stepped through and walked out along the wing.
The big jolly-boat was almost up with the plane. There were six men in it. Petacchi waved and shouted delightedly. One man raised a hand in reply. The faces of the men, milk-white under the moon, looked up at him quietly, curiously. Petacchi thought: These men are very serious, very businesslike. It is right so. He swallowed his triumph and also looked grave.
The boat came alongside the wing, now almost awash, and one man climbed up on to the wing and walked toward him. He was a short, thick man with a very direct gaze. He walked carefully, his feet well apart and his knees flexed to keep his balance. His left hand was hooked in his belt.
Petacchi said happily, «Good evening. Good evening. I am delivering one plane in good condition.» (He had thought the joke out long before.) «Please sign here.» He held out his hand.
The man from the jolly-boat took the hand in a strong grasp, braced himself, and pulled sharply. Petacchi's head was flung back by the quick jerk and he was looking full into the eyes of the moon as the stiletto flashed up and under the offered chin, through the roof of the mouth, into the brain. He knew nothing but a moment's surprise, a sear of pain, and an explosion of brilliant light.
The killer held in the knife for a moment, the back of hand feeling the stubble on Petacchi's chin, then lowered the body onto the wing and withdrew the knife. He carefully rinsed the knife in the sea water and wiped the blade on Petacchi's back and put the knife away. Then he hauled the body along the wing and thrust it under water beside the escape hatch.
The killer waded back along the wing to the waiting jolly-boat and laconically raised a thumb. By now four of the men had pulled on their aqualungs. One by one, with a last adjustment of their mouthpieces, they clumsily heaved themselves over the side of the rocking boat and sank in a foam of small bubbles. When the last man had gone, the mechanic at the engine carefully lowered a huge underwater searchlight over the side and paid out the cable. At a given moment he switched the light on and the sea and the great sinking hulk of the plane were lit up with a mist of luminescence. The mechanic slipped the idling motor into gear and backed away, paying out cable as he went. At twenty yards, out of range of the suction of the sinking plane, he stopped and switched off his engine. He reached into his overalls and took out a packet of Camels. He offered one to the killer, who took it, broke it carefully in half, put one half behind his ear, and lit the other half. The killer was a man who rigidly controlled his weaknesses.
10. The Disco Volante
On board the yacht, No. 1 put down his night glasses, took a Charvet handerkerchief out of the breast pocket of his white sharkskin jacket and dabbed gently at his forehead and temples. The musky scent of Schiaparelli's Snuff was reassuring, reminding him of the easy side of life, of Dominetta who would now be sitting down to dinner–everyone kept Spanish hours in Nassau and cocktails would not have finished before ten–with the raffish but rather gay Saumurs and their equally frivolous guests, of the early game that would already be under way at the Casino, of the calypsos thudding into the night from the bars and night clubs on Bay Street. He put the handkerchief back in his pocket. But this also was good–this wonderful operation! Like clockwork! He glanced at his watch. Just ten-fifteen. The plane had been a bare thirty minutes late, a nasty half-hour to have to wait, but the landing had been perfect. Vargas had done a good quick job on the Italian pilot–what was his name?–so that now they were running only fifteen minutes late. If the recovery group didn't have to use oxyacetylene cutters to get out the bombs, they would soon make that up. But one mustn't expect no hitch at all. There was a good eight hours of darkness to go. Calm, method, efficiency, in that order. Calm, method, efficiency. No. 1 ducked down off the bridge and went into the radio cabin. It smelled of sweat and tension. Anything from the Nassau control tower? Any report of a low-flying plane? Of a possible crash into the sea off Bimini? Then keep watching and get me No. 2. Quick, please. It's just on the quarter.
No. 1 lit a cigarette and watched the yacht's big brain get to work, scanning the ether, listening, searching. The operator played the dials with insect fingers, pausing, verifying, hastening on through the sound waves of the world. Now he suddenly stopped, checked, minutely adjusted the volume. He raised his thumb. No 1 spoke into the sphere of wire mesh that rose before his mouth from the base of the headset. «No. 1 speaking.»
«No. 2 listening.» The voice was hollow. The words waxed and waned. But it was Blofeld, all right. No. 1 knew that voice better than he remembered his father's.
«Successful. Ten-fifteen. Next phase ten-forty-five. Continuing. Over.»
«Thank you. Out.» The sound waves went dead. The interchange had taken forty-five seconds. No conceivable fear of interception in that time, on that waveband.
No. 1 went through the big stateroom and down into the hold. The four men of B team, their aqualungs beside them, were sitting around smoking. The wide underwater hatch just above the keel of the yacht was open. Moonlight, reflected off the white sand under the ship, shone up through the six feet of water in the hold. Stacked on the grating beside the men was the thick pile of tarpaulin painted a very pale café-au-lait with occasional irregular blotches of dark green and brown. No. 1 said, «All is going very well. The recovery team is at work. It should not be long now. How about the chariot and the sled?»
One of the men jerked his thumb downward. «They are down there. Outside on the sand. So it will be quicker.»
«Correct.» No. 1 nodded toward a cranelike contraption fastened to a bulkhead above the hold. «The derrick took the strain all right?»
«That chain could handle twice the weight.»
«The pumps?»
«In order. They will clear the hold in seven minutes.»
«Good. Well, take it easy. It will be a long night.» No. 1 climbed the iron ladder out of the hold and went up on deck. He didn't need his night glasses. Two hundred yards away to starboard the sea was empty save for the jolly-boat riding at anchor above the golden submarine glow. The red marker light had been taken into the boat. The rattle of the little generator making current for the big searchlight was loud. It would carry far across a sea as still as this. But accumulators would have been too bulky and might have exhausted themselves before the work was finished. The generator was a calculated risk and a small one at that. The nearest island was five miles away and uninhabited unless someone was having a midnight picnic on it. The yacht had stopped and searched it on the way to the rendezvous. Everything had been done that could be done, every precaution taken. The wonderful machine was running silently and full out. There was nothing to worry about now except the next step. No. 1 went through the hatch into the enclosed bridge and bent over the lighted chart table.
Emilio Largo, No. 1, was a big, conspicuously handsome man of about forty. He was a Roman and he looked like a Roman, not from the Rome of today, but from the Rome of the ancient coins. The large, long face was sunburned a deep mahogany brown and the light glinted off the strong rather hooked nose and the clean-cut lantern jaw that had been meticulously shaved before he had started out late that afternoon. In contrast to the hard, slow-moving brown eyes, the mouth, with its thick, rather down-curled lips, belong to a satyr. Ears that, from dead in front, looked almost pointed, added to an animalness that would devastate women. The only weakness in the fine centurion face lay in the overlong sideburns and the too carefully waved black hair that glistened so brightly with pomade that it might almost have been painted onto the skull. There was no fat on the big-boned frame–Largo had fought for Italy in the Olympic foils, was almost an Olympic-class swimmer with the Australian crawl, and only a month before had won the senior class in the Nassau water-ski championships–and the muscles bulged under the exquisitely cut sharkskin jacket. An aid to his athletic prowess were his hands. They were almost twice the normal size, even for a man of his stature, and now, as they walked across the chart holding a ruler and a pair of dividers, they looked, extruding from the white sleeves that rested on the white chart, almost like large brown furry animals quite separate from their owner.
Largo was an adventurer, a predator on the herd. Two hundred years before he would have been a pirate–not one of the jolly ones of the story books, but a man like Blackbeard, a bloodstained cutthroat who scythed his way through people toward gold. But Blackbeard had been too much of a bully and a roughneck, and wherever he went in the world he left behind a tell-tale shambles. Largo was different. There was a cool brain and an exquisite finesse behind his actions that had always saved him from the herd's revenge–from his postwar debut as head of the black market in Naples, through five lucrative years smuggling from Tangier, five more master-minding the wave of big jewel robberies on the French Riviera, down to his last five with SPECTRE. Always he got away with it. Always he had seen the essential step ahead that would have been hidden from lesser men. He was the epitome of the gentleman crook–a man of the world, a great womanizer, a high liver with the entrée to café society in four continents, and the last survivor, conveniently enough, of a once famous Roman family whose fortune, so he said, he had inherited. He also benefited from having no wife, a spotless police record, nerves of steel, a heart of ice, and the ruthlessness of a Himmler. He was the perfect man for SPECTRE, and the perfect man, rich Nassau playboy and all, to be Supreme Commander of Plan Omega.
One of the crew knocked on the hatch and came in. «They have signaled. The chariot and sled are on the way.»
«Thank you.» In the heat and excitement of any operation, Largo always created calm. However much was at stake, however great the dangers and however urgent the need for speed and quick decisions, he made a fetish of calm, of the pause, of an almost judo-like inertia. This was an act of will to which he had trained himself. He found it had an extraordinary effect on his accomplices. It tied them to him and invoked their obedience and loyalty more than any other factor in leadership. That he, a clever and cunning man, should show unconcern at particularly bad, or, as in this case, particularly good news, meant that he already knew that what had happened would happen. With Largo, consequences were foreseen. One could depend on him. He never lost balance. So now, at this splendid news, Largo deliberately picked up his dividers again and made a trace, an imaginary trace, on the chart for the sake of the crew member. He then put down the dividers and strolled out of the air-conditioning into the warm night.
A tiny worm of underwater light was creeping out toward the jolly-boat. It was a two-man underwater chariot identical with those used by the Italians during the war and bought, with improvements, from Ansaldo, the firm that had originally invented the one-man submarine. It was towing an underwater sled, a sharp prowed tray with negative buoyancy used for the recovery and transport of heavy objects under the sea. The worm of light merged with the luminescence from the searchlight and, minutes later, re-emerged on its way back to the ship. It would have been natural for Largo to have gone down to the hold to witness the arrival of the two atomic weapons. Typically, he did nothing of the sort. In due course the little headlight reappeared, going back over its previous course. Now the sled would be loaded with the huge tarpaulin, camouflaged to merge in with just this piece of underwater terrain, with its white sand and patches of coral outcrop, that would be spread so as to cover every inch of the wrecked plane and pegged all round with corkscrew iron stanchions that would not be shifted by the heaviest surface storm or groundswell. In his imagination, Largo saw every move of the eight men who would now be working far below the surface on the reality for which there had been so much training, so many dummy exercises. He marveled at the effort, the incredible ingenuity, that had gone into Plan Omega. Now all the months of preparation, of sweat and tears, were being repaid.
There came a bright blink of light on the surface of the water not far from the jolly-boat–then another and another. The men were surfacing. As they did so, the moon caught the glass of their masks. They swam to the boat–Largo verified that all eight were there–and clumsily heaved up the short ladder and over the side.
The mechanic and Branch, the German killer, helped them off with their gear, the underwater light was switched off and hauled inboard and, instead of the rattle of the generator, there came the muffled roar of the twin Johnstons. The boat sped back to the yacht and to the waiting arms of the derricks. The couplings were made firm and verified and, with a shrill electric whine, the boat, complete with passengers, was swung up and inboard.
The captain came and stood at Largo's side. He was a big, sullen, rawboned man who had been cashiered from the Canadian Navy for drunkenness and insubordination. He had been a slave to Largo ever since Largo had called him to the stateroom one day and broken a chair over his head on account of a questioned command. That was the kind of discipline he understood. Now he said, «The hold's clear. Okay to sail?»
«Are both the teams satisfied?»
«They say so. Not a hitch.»
«First see they all get one full jigger of whisky. Then tell them to rest. They will be going out again in just about an hour. Ask Kotze to have a word with me. Be ready to sail in five minutes.»
«Okay.»
The eyes of the physicist, Kotze, were bright under the moon. Largo noticed that he was trembling slightly as if with fever. He tried to instill calm into the man. He said cheerfully, «Well, my friend. Are you pleased with your toys? The toy shop has sent you everything you want?»
Kotze's lips trembled. He was on the verge of excited tears. He said, his voice high, «It is tremendous! You have no idea. Weapons such as I had never dreamed of. And of a simplicity–a safety! Even a child could handle these things without danger.»
«The cradles were big enough for them? You have room to do your work?»
«Yes, yes.» Kotze almost flapped his hands with enthusiasm. «There are no problems, none at all. The fuses will be off in no time. It will be a simple matter to replace them with the time mechanism. Maslov is already at work correcting the threads. I am using lead screws. They are more easy to machine.»
«And the two plugs–these ignitors you were telling me about? They are safe? Where did the divers find them?»
«They were in a leaden box under the pilot's seat. I have verified them. Perfectly simple when the time comes. They will of course be kept apart in the hiding place. The rubber bags are splendid. Just what was needed. I have verified that they seal completely watertight.
«No danger from radiation?»
«Not now. Everything is in the leaden cases.» Kotze shrugged. «I may have picked up a little while I was working on the monsters but I wore the harness. I will watch for signs. I know what to do.»
«You are a brave man, Kotze. I won't go near the damned things until I have to. I value my sex life too much. So you are satisfied with everything? You have no problems? Nothing has been left on the plane?»
Kotze had got himself under control. He had been bursting with the news, with his relief that the technical problems were within his power. Now he felt empty, tired. He had voided himself of the tensions that had been with him for weeks. After all this planning, all these dangers, supposing his knowledge had not been enough! Supposing the bloody English had invented some new safety device, some secret control, of which he knew nothing! But when the time came, when he unwrapped the protective webbing and got to work with his jeweler's tools, then triumph and gratitude had flooded into him. No, now there were no problems. Everything was all right. Now there was only routine. Kotze said dully, «No. There are no problems. Everything is there. I will go and get the job finished.»
Largo watched the thin figure shamble off along the deck. Scientists were queer fish. They saw nothing but science. Kotze couldn't visualize the risks that still had to be run. For him the turning of a few screws was the end of the job. For the rest of the time he would be a useless supercargo. It would be easier to get rid of him. But that couldn't be done yet. He would have to be kept on just in case the weapons had to be used. But he was a depressing little man and a near hysteric. Largo didn't like such people near him. They lowered his spirits. They smelled of bad luck. Kotze would have to be found some job in the engine room where he would be kept busy and, above all, out of sight.
Largo went into the cockpit bridge. The captain was sitting at the wheel, a light aluminum affair consisting only of the bottom half of a circle. Largo said, «Okay. Let's go.» The captain reached out his hand to the bank of buttons at his side and pressed the one that said Start Both .» There came a low, hollow rumble from amidships.
A light blinked on the panel to show that both engines were firing properly. The captain pulled the electromagnetic gear shift to « Slow Ahead Both « and the yacht began to move. The captain made it « Full Ahead Both « and the yacht trembled and settled a little in the stern. The captain watched the revolution counter, his hand on a squat lever at his side. At twenty knots the counter showed 5000. The captain inched back the lever that depressed the great steel scoop below the hull. The revolutions remained the same, but the finger of the speedometer crawled on round the dial until it said forty knots. Now the yacht was half flying, half planing across the glittering sheet of still water, the hull supported four feet above the surface on the broad, slightly uptilted metal skid and with only a few feet of the stern and the two big screws submerged. It was a glorious sensation and Largo, as he always did, thrilled to it.
The motor yacht, Disco Volante , was a hydrofoil craft, built for Largo with SPECTRE funds by the Italian constructors Leopoldo Rodrigues of Messina, the only firm in the world to have successfully adapted the Shertel-Sachsenberg system to commercial use. With a hull of aluminum and magnesium alloy, two Daimler-Benz four-stroke Diesels supercharged by twin Brown-Boveri turbo superchargers, the Disco Volante could move her hundred tons at around fifty knots, with a cruising range at that speed of around four hundred miles. She had cost £200,000, but she had been the only craft in the world with the speed, cargo-, and passenger-space, and with the essential shallow draft for the job required of her in Bahamian waters.
The constructors claim of this type of craft that it has a particular refinement that SPECTRE had appreciated. Having high stability and a shallow draft, Aliscafos , as they are called in Italy, do not determine magnetic field variation, nor do they cause pressure waves–both desirable characteristics, in case the Disco Volante might wish, some time in her career, to escape detection.
Six months before, the Disco had been shipped out to the Florida Keys by the South Atlantic route. She had been a sensation in Florida waters and among the Bahamas, and had vastly helped to make Largo the most popular «millionaire» in a corner of the world that crawls with millionaires who «have everything.» And the fast and mysterious voyages he made in the Disco , with all those underwater swimmers and occasionally with a two seater Lycoming-engined folding-wing amphibian mounted on the roof of the streamlined superstructure had aroused just the right amount of excited comment. Slowly, Largo had let the secret leak out–through his own indiscretions at dinners and cocktail parties, through carefully primed members of the crew in the Bay Street bars. This was a treasure hunt, an important one. There was a pirates' map, a sunken galleon thickly overgrown with coral. The wreck had been located. Largo was only waiting for the end of the winter tourist season and for the calms of early summer and then his shareholders would be coming out from Europe and work would begin in earnest. And two days before, the shareholders, nineteen of them, had duly come trickling in to Nassau by different routes–from Bermuda, from New York, from Miami. Rather dull-looking people to be sure, just the sort of hard-headed, hard-working businessmen who would be amused by a gamble like this, a pleasant sunshine gamble with a couple of weeks' holiday in Nassau to make up for it if the doubloons were after all not in the wreck. And that evening, with all the visitors on board, the engines of the Disco had begun to murmur, just when they should have, the harbor folk agreed, just when it was getting dark, and the beautiful dark blue and white yacht had slid out of harbor. Once in the open sea, the engines had started up their deep booming that had gradually diminished to the southeast, toward, the listeners agreed, an entirely appropriate hunting ground.
The southerly course was considered appropriate because it is among the Southern Bahamas that the great local treasure troves are expected to be found. It was through the southerly passages through these islands–the Crooked Island, the Mayaguana and the Caicos passages–that the Spanish treasure ships would try to dodge the pirates and the French and British fleets as they made for home. Here, it is believed, lie the remains of the Porto Pedro , sunk in 1668, with a million pounds of bullion on board. The Santa Cruz , lost in 1694, carried twice as much, and the El Capitan and San Pedro, Both sunk in 1719, carried a million, and half a million, pounds of treasure respectively.
Every year, treasure hunts for these and other ships are carried out among the Southern Bahamas. No one can guess how much, if anything, has been recovered, but everyone in Nassau knows of the 72-lb. silver bar recovered by two Nassau businessmen off Gorda Cay in 1950, and since presented to the Nassau Development Board, in whose offices it is permanently on view. So all Bahamians know that treasure is there for the finding, and when the harbor folk of Nassau heard the deep boom of the Disco's engines dying away to the south, they nodded wisely.
But once the Disco was well away and the moon had not yet risen, with all lights doused, she swung away in a wide circle toward the west and toward the rendezvous point she was now leaving. Now she was a hundred miles, two hours, away from Nassau. But it would be almost dawn when, after one more vital call, Nassau would again hear the boom of her engines coming in from the false southern trail.
Largo got up and bent over the chart table. They had covered the course many times and in all weathers. It was really no problem. But Phases I and II had gone so well that double care must be taken over Phase III. Yes, all was well. They were dead on course. Fifty miles. They would be there in an hour. He told the captain to keep the yacht as she was, and went below to the radio room. Eleven-fifteen was just coming up. It was call time.
The small island, Dog Island, was no bigger than two tennis courts. It was a hunk of dead coral with a smattering of seagrape and battered screw palm that grew on nothing but pockets of brackish rainwater and sand. It was the point where the Dog Shoal broke the surface, a well-known navigational hazard that even the fishing boats kept well away from. In daylight, Andros Island showed to eastward, but at night it was as safe as houses.
The Disco came up fast and then slowly lowered herself back into the water and slid up to within a cable's length of the rock. Her arrival brought small waves that lapped and sucked at the rock and then were still. The anchor slipped silently down forty feet and held. Down in the hold, Largo and the disposal team of four waited for the underwater hatch to be opened.
The five men wore aqualungs. Largo held nothing but a powerful underwater electric torch. The four others were divided into two pairs. They wore webbing slung between them and they sat on the edge of the iron grating with their frogman's feet dangling, waiting for the water to swirl in and give them buoyancy. On the webbing, between each pair, rested a six-foot-long tapering object in an obscene gray rubber envelope.
The water seeped, rushed, and then burst into the hold, submerging the five men. They slipped off their seats and trudged out through the hatchway, Largo in the lead and the two pairs behind him at precisely tested intervals.
Largo did not at first switch on his torch. It was not necessary and it would bring stupid, dazed fish that were a distraction. It might even bring shark or barracuda, and, though they would be no more than a nuisance, one of the team, despite Largo's assurances, might lose his nerve.
They swam on in the soft moonlit mist of the sea. At first there was nothing but a milky void below them, but then the coral shelf of the island showed up, climbing steeply toward the surface. Sea fans, like small shrouds in the moonlight, waved softly, beckoning, and the clumps and trees of coral were gray and enigmatic. It was because of these things, the harmless underwater mysteries that make the skin crawl on the inexperienced, that Largo had decided to lead the disposal teams himself. Out in the open, where the plane had foundered, the eye of the big searchlight made, with the known object of the plane itself, the underwater world into the semblance of a big room. But this was different. This gray-white world needed the contempt of a swimmer who had experienced these phantom dangers a thousand times before. That was the main reason why Largo led the teams. He also wanted to know exactly how the two gray sausages were stored away. It could happen, if things went wrong, that he would have to salvage them himself.
The underpart of the small island had been eroded by the waves so that, seen from below, it resembled a thick mushroom. Under the umbrella of coral there was a wide fissure, a dark wound in the side of the stem. Largo made for it and, when he was close, switched on his torch. Beneath the umbrella of coral it was dark. The yellow light of the torch showed up the minute life of an inshore coral community–the pale sea urchins and the fierce black spines of sea eggs, the shifting underbrush of seaweeds, the yellow and blue seeking antennae of a langouste, the butterfly and angel fish, fluttering like moths in the light, a coiled bêche de mer , a couple of meandering sea caterpillars and the black and green jelly of a sea hare.
Largo lowered the black fins on his feet, got his balance on a ledge, and looked round, shining his torch on the rock so that the two teams could get a foothold. Then he waved them on and into the smooth broad fissure that showed a glimmer of moonlight at its far end inside the center of the rock. The underwater cave was only about ten yards long. Largo led the teams one after the other through and into the small chamber that might once perhaps have been a wonderful repository for a different kind of treasure. From the chamber a narrow fissure led to the upper air, and this would certainly become a fine blow-hole in a storm, though it would be unlikely that fishermen would be close enough to the Dog Shoal in a storm to see the water fountaining out of the center of the island. Above the present water line in the chamber, Largo's men had hammered stanchions into the rock to form cradles for the two atomic weapons with leather straps to hold them secure against any weather. Now, one by one, the two teams lifted the rubber packages up onto the iron bars and made them secure. Largo examined the result and was satisfied. The weapons would be ready for him when he needed them. In the meantime such radiation as there was would be quarantined within this tiny rock a hundred miles from Nassau and his men and his ship would be clean and innocent as snow.
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