James Bond Anthology (217 page)

‘Sure. C.I.A. knows all.’

At the entrance Leiter had his luggage, which was considerable, put aboard Bond’s taxi, and told the driver to take it to the Royal Bahamian. A man standing beside an undistinguished-looking black Ford Consul saloon left the car and came up. ‘Mr Larkin? I’m from the Hertz company. This is the car you ordered. We hope she’s what you want. You did specify something conventional.’

Leiter glanced casually at the car. ‘Looks all right. I just want a car that’ll go. None of those ritzy jobs with only room for a small blonde with a sponge bag. I’m here to do property work – not jazz it up.’

‘May I see your New York licence, sir? Right. Then if you’ll just sign here … and I’ll make a note of the number of your Diner’s Club card. When you go, leave the car anywhere you like and just notify us. We’ll collect it. Have a good holiday, sir.’

They got into the car. Bond took the wheel. Leiter said that he’d have to practise a bit on what he called ‘this Limey southpaw routine’ of driving on the left, and anyway he’d be interested to see if Bond had improved his cornering since their last drive together.

When they were out of the airport Bond said, ‘Now go ahead and tell. Last time we met you were with Pinkertons. What’s the score?’

‘Drafted. Just damned well drafted. Hell, anyone would think there was a war on. You see, James, once you’ve worked for C.I.A., you’re automatically put on the reserve of officers when you leave. Unless you’ve been cashiered for not eating the code-book under fire or something. And apparently my old Chief, Allen Dulles that is, just didn’t have the men to go round when the President sounded the fire alarm. So I and twenty or so other guys were just pulled in – drop everything, twenty-four hours to report. Hell! I thought the Russians had landed! And then they tell me the score and to pack my bathing trunks and my spade and bucket and come on down to Nassau. So of course I griped like hell. Asked them if I shouldn’t brush up on my Canasta game and take some quick lessons in the Cha-cha. So then they unbuttoned and told me I was to team up with you down here and I thought maybe if that old bastard of yours, N. or M. or whatever you call him, had sent you down here with your old equalizer, there might be something cooking in the pot after all. So I picked up the gear you’d asked for from Admin., packed the bow and arrows instead of the spade and bucket, and here I am. And that’s that. Now you tell, you old sonofabitch. Hell, it’s good to see you.’

Bond took Leiter through the whole story, point by point from the moment he had been summoned to M.’s office the morning before. When he came to the shooting outside his headquarters, Leiter stopped him.

‘Now what do you make of that, James? In my book, that’s a pretty funny coincidence. Have you been fooling around with anybody’s wife lately? Sounds more like around The Loop in Chicago than a mile or so from Piccadilly.’

Bond said seriously, ‘It makes no sense to me, and none to anyone else. The only man who might have had it in for me, recently that is, is a crazy bastard I met down at a sort of clinic place I had to go to on some blasted medical grounds.’ Bond, to Leiter’s keen pleasure, rather sheepishly gave details of his ‘cure’ at Shrublands. ‘I bowled this man out as a member of a Chinese Tong, one of their secret societies, the Red Lightning Tong. He must have heard me getting the gen on his outfit from Records – on an open line from a call box in the place. Next thing, he damned near managed to murder me. Just for a lark, and to get even, I did my best to roast him alive.’ Bond gave the details. ‘Nice quiet place, Shrublands. You’d be surprised how carrot juice seems to affect people.’

‘Where was this lunatic asylum?’

‘Place called Washington. Modest little place compared with yours. Not far from Brighton.’

‘And the letter was posted from Brighton.’

‘That’s the hell of a long shot.’

‘I’ll try another. One of the points our chaps brought up was that if a plane was to be stolen at night and landed at night, a full moon would be the hell of an aid to the job. But the plane was taken five days after the full. Just supposing your roast chicken was the letter-sender. And supposing the roasting forced him to delay sending the letter while he recovered. His employers would be pretty angry. Yes?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘And supposing they gave orders for him to be rubbed for inefficiency. And supposing the killer got to him just as he got to you to settle his private account. From what you tell me he wouldn’t have lain down under what you did to him. Well, now. Just supposing all that. It adds up, doesn’t it?’

Bond laughed, partly in admiration. ‘You’ve been taking mescalin or something. It’s a damned good sequence for a comic strip, but these things don’t happen in real life.’

‘Planes with atom bombs don’t get stolen in real life. Except that they do. You’re slowing down, James. How many people would believe the files on some of the cases you and I have got mixed up in? Don’t give me that crap about real life. There ain’t no such animal.’

Bond said seriously, ‘Well, look here, Felix. Tell you what I’ll do. There’s just enough sense in your story, so I’ll put it on the machine to M. tonight and see if the Yard can get anywhere with it. They could check with the clinic and the hospital in Brighton, if that’s where he was taken, and they may be able to get on from there. Trouble is, wherever they get, there’s nothing left of the man but his shoes, and I doubt if they’ll catch up with the man on the motorbike. It looked a real pro job to me.’

‘Why not? These hi-jackers sound like pros. It’s a pro plan. It all fits all right. You go ahead and put it on the wire and don’t be ashamed of saying it was my idea. My medal collection has got to looking a bit thin since I left the outfit.’

They pulled up under the portico of the Royal Bahamian and Bond gave the keys to the parking attendant. Leiter checked in and they went up to his room and sent for two double dry Martinis on the rocks and the menu.

From the pretentious dishes, ‘For Your Particular Consideration’, printed in Ornamental Gothic, Bond chose Native Seafood Cocktail Suprême followed by Disjointed Home Farm Chicken, Sauté au Cresson, which was described in italics as ‘Tender Farm Chicken, Broiled to a Rich Brown, Basted with Creamery Butter and Disjointed for Your Convenience. Price 38/6 or dollars 5.35.’ Felix Leiter went for the Baltic Herring in Sour Cream followed by ‘Chopped Tenderloin of Beef, French Onion Rings (Our Renowned Beef is Chef Selected from the Finest Corn-fed, Mid-Western Cattle, and Aged to Perfection to Assure you of the Very Best). Price 40/3 or dollars 5.65.’

When they both had commented sourly and at length about the inflated bogosity of tourist hotel food and particularly the mendacious misuse of the English language to describe materials which had certainly been in various deep-freezes for at least six months, they settled down on the balcony to discuss Bond’s findings of the morning.

Half an hour and one more double dry Martini later, their luncheon came. The whole thing amounted to about five shillings’ worth of badly cooked rubbish. They ate in a mood of absentminded irritation, saying nothing. Finally Leiter threw down his knife and fork. ‘This is Hamburger and bad Hamburger. The French onion rings were never in France and what’s more,’ he poked at the remains with a fork, ‘they’re not even rings. They’re oval.’ He looked belligerently across at Bond. ‘All right, Hawkshaw. Where do we go from here?’

‘The major decision is to eat out in future. The next is to pay a visit to the
Disco
 – now.’ Bond got up from the table. ‘When we’ve done that, we’ll have to decide whether or not these people are hunting pieces of eight or £100,000,000. Then we’ll have to report progress.’ Bond waved at the packing cases in a corner of the room. ‘I’ve got the loan of a couple of rooms on the top floor of police headquarters here. The Commissioner’s co-operative and a solid character. These Colonial Police are good, and this one’s a cut above the rest. We can set up the radio there and make contact this evening. Tonight there’s this party at the Casino. We’ll go to that and see if any of these faces mean anything to either of us. The first thing’s to see if the yacht’s clean or not. Can you break that Geiger counter out?’

‘Sure. And it’s a honey.’ Leiter went to the cases, selected one, and opened it. He came back carrying what looked like a Rolleiflex camera in a portable leather case. ‘Here, give me a hand.’ Leiter took off his wrist-watch and strapped on what appeared to be another watch. He slung the ‘camera’ by its strap over his left shoulder. ‘Now run those wires from the watch up my sleeve and down inside my coat. Right. Now these two small plugs go through these holes in my coat pocket and into the two holes in the box. Got it? Now we’re all fixed.’ Leiter stood back and posed. ‘Man with a camera and a wrist-watch.’ He unbuttoned the flap of the camera. ‘See? Perfectly good lenses and all that. Even a button to press in case you have to seem to take a picture. But in back of the make-believe there’s a metal valve, a circuit, and batteries. Now take a look at this watch. And it is a watch.’ He held it under Bond’s eyes. ‘Only difference is that it’s a very small watch mechanism and that sweep second-hand is a meter that takes the radio-active count. Those wires up the sleeve hitch it on to the machine. Now then. You’re still wearing that old wrist-watch of yours with the big phosphorous numerals. So I walk round the room for a moment to get the background count. That’s basic. All sorts of things give off radiation of some sort. And I take an occasional glance at my watch – nervous type, and I’ve got an appointment coming up. Now here, by the bathroom, all that metal is giving off something and my watch is registering positive, but very little. Nothing else in the room and I’ve established the amount of background interference I’ll have to discount when I start to get hot. Right? Now I come close up to you and my camera’s only a few inches away from your hand. Here, take a look. Put your watch right up against the counter. See! The sweephand is getting all excited. Move your watch away and it loses interest. It’s those phosphorous numerals of yours. Remember the other day one of the watch companies withdrew an air-pilot’s watch from the market because the Atomic Energy people got fussy? Same thing. They thought this particular pilot’s watch, with the big phosphorescent numerals, was giving off too much radiation to be good for the wearer. Of course,’ Leiter patted the camera case, ‘this is a special job. Most types give off a clicking sound and if you’re prospecting for uranium, which is the big market for these machines, you wear earphones to try and pick up the stuff underground. For this job we don’t need anything so sensitive. If we get near where those bombs are hidden, this damned sweephand’ll go right off the dial. Okay? So let’s go hire ourselves a sixpenny sick and pay a call on the ocean greyhound.’

13 |
‘
MY NAME IS EMILIO LARGO
’

Lester’s ‘sixpenny sick’ was the hotel launch, a smart Chrysler-engined speedboat that said it would be 20 dollars an hour. They ran out westwards from the harbour, past Silver Cay, Long Cay and Balmoral Island, and round Delaporte Point. Five miles further down the coast, encrusted with glittering seashore properties the boatman said cost £400 per foot of beach frontage, they rounded Old Fort Point and came upon the gleaming white and dark blue ship lying with two anchors out in deep water just outside the reef. Leiter whistled. He said in an awestruck voice, ‘Boy, is that a piece of boat! I’d sure like to have one of those to play with in my bath.’

Bond said, ‘She’s Italian. Built by a firm called Rodrigues at Messina. Thing called an
Aliscafo
. She’s got a hydrofoil under the hull and when she gets going you let this sort of skid down and she rises up and practically flies. Only the screws and a few feet of the stern stay in the water. The Police Commissioner says she can do 50 knots in calm water. Only good for inshore work of course, but they can carry upwards of a hundred passengers when they’re designed as fast ferries. Apparently this one’s been designed for about forty. The rest of the space is taken up with the owner’s quarters and cargo space. Must have cost damned near a quarter of a million.’

The boatman broke in, ‘They say on Bay Street that she goin’ go after the treasure these next few days or so. All the people that own share in the gold come in a few days ago. Then she spen’ one whole night doin’ a final recce. They say is down Exhuma way, or over by Watlings Island. Guess you folks know that’s where Columbus make him first landfall on this side of the Atlantic. Around fourteen ninety somethin’. But could be anywhere down there. They’s always been talk of treasure down ’mongst the Ragged Islands – even as far as Crooked Island. Fact is she sail out southward. Hear her myself, right until her engines died away. East by south-east I’da say.’ The boatman spat discreetly over the side. ‘Must be plenty heap of treasure with the cost of that ship and all the money they throwing ’way. Every time she go to the Hoiling Wharf they say the bill’s five hundred pound.’

Bond said casually, ‘Which night was it they did the final recce?’

‘Night after she hoiled. That’d be two nights ago. Sail round six.’

The blank portholes of the ship watched them approach. A sailor polishing brass round the curve of the enclosed dome that was the bridge walked through the hatch into the bridge and Bond could see him talking into a mouthpiece. A tall man in white ducks and a very wide mesh singlet appeared on deck and observed them through binoculars. He called something to the sailor, who came and stood at the top of the ladder down the starboard side. When their launch came alongside, the man cupped his hands and called down, ‘What is your business please? Have you an appointment?’