James Bond Anthology (325 page)

Scaramanga laughed his harsh laugh, but carefully. This time the laugh didn’t turn into the red cough. ‘Quite the little English gentleman! Just like I spelled it out. S’pose you wouldn’t like to hand me your gun and leave me to myself for five minutes like in the books? Well, you’re right, boyo! I’d crawl after you and blast the back of your head off.’ The eyes still bored into Bond’s with the arrogant superiority, the cold superman quality that had made him the greatest pro gunman in the world – no drinks, no drugs – the impersonal trigger man who killed for money and, by the way he sometimes did it, for the kicks.

Bond examined him carefully. How could Scaramanga fail to break when he was going to die in minutes? Was there some last trick the man was going to spring? Some hidden weapon? But the man just lay there, apparently relaxed, propped up against the mangrove roots, his chest heaving rhythmically, the granite of his face not crumbling even minutely in defeat. On his forehead, there was not as much sweat as there was on Bond’s. Scaramanga lay in dappled black shadow. For ten minutes, James Bond had stood in the middle of the clearing in blazing sunshine. Suddenly he felt the vitality oozing out through his feet into the black mud. And his resolve was going with it. He said, and he heard his voice ring out harshly, ‘All right, Scaramanga, this is it.’ He lifted his gun and held it in the two-handed grip of the target man. ‘I’m going to make it as quick as I can.’

Scaramanga held up a hand. For the first time his face showed emotion. ‘Okay, feller.’ The voice, amazingly, supplicated. ‘I’m a Catholic, see? Jes’ let me say my last prayer. Okay? Won’t take long, then you can blaze away. Every man’s got to die some time. You’re a fine guy as guys go. It’s the luck of the game. If my bullet had been an inch, mebbe two inches, to the right, it’d be you that’s dead in place of me. Right? Can I say my prayer, Mister?’

James Bond lowered his gun. He would give the man a few minutes. He knew he couldn’t give him more. Pain and heat and hunger and thirst. It wouldn’t be long before he lay down himself, right there on the hard cracked mud, just to rest. If someone wanted to kill him, they could. He said, and the words came out slowly, tiredly, ‘Go ahead, Scaramanga. One minute only.’

‘Thanks, pal.’ Scaramanga’s hand went up to his face and covered his eyes. There came a drone of Latin which went on and on. Bond stood there in the sunshine, his gun lowered, watching Scaramanga, but at the same time not watching him, the edge of his focus dulled by the pain and the heat and the hypnotic litany that came from behind the shuttered face and the horror of what Bond was going to have to do – in one minute, perhaps two.

The fingers of Scaramanga’s right hand crawled imperceptibly sideways across his face, inch by inch, centimetre by centimetre. They got to his ear and stopped. The drone of the Latin prayer never altered its slow, lulling tempo.

And then the hand leaped behind the head and the tiny golden Derringer roared and James Bond spun round as if he had taken a right to the jaw and crashed to the ground.

At once Scaramanga was on his feet and moving forward like a swift cat. He snatched up the discarded knife and held it forward like a tongue of silver flame.

But James Bond twisted like a dying animal on the ground and the iron in his hand cracked viciously again and again – five times, and then fell out of his hand on to the black earth as his gun-hand went to the right side of his belly and stayed there, clutching at the terrible pain.

The big man stood for a moment and looked up at the deep blue sky. His fingers opened in a spasm and let go the knife. His pierced heart stuttered and limped and stopped. He crashed flat back and lay, his arms flung wide, as if someone had thrown him away.

After a while, the land crabs came out of their holes and began nosing at the scraps of the snake. The bigger offal could wait until the night.

16 | THE WRAP-UP

The extremely smart policeman from the wrecking squad on the railway came down the river bank at the normal, dignified gait of a Jamaican constable on his beat. No Jamaican policeman ever breaks into a run. He has been taught that this lacks authority. Felix Leiter, now put under with morphine by the doctor, had said that a good man was after a bad man in the swamp and that there might be shooting. Felix Leiter wasn’t more explicit than that, but, when he said he was from the F.B.I. – a legitimate euphemism – in Washington, the policeman tried to get some of the wrecking squad to come with him and, when he failed, sauntered cautiously off on his own, his baton swinging with assumed jauntiness.

The boom of the guns and the explosion of screeching marsh birds gave him an approximate fix. He had been born not far away, at Negril, and, as a boy, he had often used his gins and his slingshot in these marshes. They held no fears for him. When he came to the approximate point on the river bank, he turned left into the mangrove and, conscious that his black-and-blue uniform was desperately conspicuous, stalked cautiously from clump to clump into the morass. He was protected by nothing but his nightstick and the knowledge that to kill a policeman was a capital offence without the option. He only hoped that the good man and the bad man knew this too.

With all the birds gone, there was dead silence. The constable noticed that the tracks of bush rats and other small animals were running past him on a course that converged with his target area. Then he heard the rattling scuttle of the crabs and, in a moment, from behind a thick mangrove clump, he saw the glint of Scaramanga’s shirt. He watched and listened. There was no movement and no sound. He strolled, with dignity, into the middle of the clearing, looked at the two bodies and the guns and took out his nickel police whistle and blew three long blasts. Then he sat down in the shade of a bush, took out his report pad, licked his pencil and began writing in a laborious hand.

A week later, James Bond regained consciousness. He was in a green-shaded room. He was under water. The slowly revolving fan in the ceiling was the screw of a ship that was about to run him down. He swam for his life. But it was no good. He was tied down, anchored to the bottom of the sea. He screamed at the top of his lungs. To the nurse at the end of the bed it was the whisper of a moan. At once she was beside him. She put a cool hand on his forehead. While she took his pulse, James Bond looked up at her with unfocused eyes. So this was what a mermaid looked like! He muttered ‘You’re pretty,’ and gratefully swam back down into her arms.

The nurse wrote ninety-five on his sheet and telephoned down to the ward sister. She looked in the dim mirror and tidied her hair in preparation for the R.M.O. in charge of this apparently Very Important Patient.

The Resident Medical Officer, a young Jamaican graduate from Edinburgh, arrived with the matron, a kindly dragon on loan from King Edward VII’s. He heard the nurse’s report. He went over to the bed and gently lifted Bond’s eyelids. He slipped a thermometer under Bond’s armpit and held Bond’s pulse in one hand and a pocket chronometer in the other and there was silence in the little room. Outside, the traffic tore up and down a Kingston road.

The doctor released Bond’s pulse and slipped the chronometer back into the trouser pocket under the white smock. He wrote figures on the chart. The nurse held the door open and the three people went out into the corridor. The doctor talked to the matron. The nurse was allowed to listen. ‘He’s going to be all right. Temperature well down. Pulse a little fast but that may have been the result of his waking. Reduce the antibiotics. I’ll talk to the floor sister about that later. Keep on with the intravenous feeding. Dr Macdonald will be up later to attend to the dressings. He’ll be waking again. If he asks for something to drink, give him fruit juice. He should be on soft foods soon. Miracle really. Missed the abdominal viscera. Didn’t even shave a kidney. Muscle only. That bullet was dipped in enough poison to kill a horse. Thank God that man at Sav’ La Mar recognized the symptoms of snake venom and gave him those massive anti-snake bite injections. Remind me to write to him, matron. He saved the man’s life. Now then, no visitors of course, for at least another week. You can tell the police and the High Commissioner’s Office that he’s on the mend. I don’t know who he is, but apparently London keep on worrying us about him. Something to do with the Ministry of Defence. From now on, put them and all other inquiries through to the High Commissioner’s Office. They seem to think they’re in charge of him.’ He paused. ‘By the way, how’s his friend getting on in Number Twelve? The one the American Ambassador and Washington have been on about. He’s not on my list, but he keeps on asking to see this Mr Bond.’

‘Compound fracture of the tibia,’ said the matron. ‘No complications.’ She smiled. ‘Except that he’s a bit fresh with the nurses. He should be walking with a stick in ten days. He’s already seen the police. I suppose it’s all to do with that story in the
Gleaner
about those American tourists being killed when the bridge collapsed near Green Island Harbour. But the Commissioner’s handling it all personally. The story in the
Gleaner
’s very vague.’

The doctor smiled. ‘Nobody tells me anything. Just as well. I haven’t got the time to listen to them. Well, thank you, matron. I must get along. Multiple crash at Halfway Tree. The ambulances’ll be here any minute.’ He hurried away. The matron went about her business. The nurse, excited by all this high-level talk, went softly back into the green-shaded room, tidied the sheet over the naked right shoulder of her patient where the doctor had pulled it down, and went back to her chair at the end of the bed and her copy of
Ebony
.

Ten days later, the little room was crowded. James Bond, propped up among extra pillows, was amused by the galaxy of officialdom that had been assembled. On his left was the Commissioner of Police, resplendent in his black uniform with silver insignia. On his right was a Judge of the Supreme Court in full regalia accompanied by a deferential clerk. A massive figure, to whom Felix Leiter, on crutches, was fairly respectful, had been introduced as ‘Colonel Bannister’ from Washington. Head of Station C, a quiet civil servant called Alec Hill, who had been flown out from London, stood near the door and kept his appraising eyes unwaveringly on Bond. Mary Goodnight, who was to take notes of the proceedings but also, on the matron’s strict instructions, watch for any sign of fatigue in James Bond and have absolute authority to close the meeting if he showed strain, sat demurely beside the bed with a shorthand pad on her knees. But James Bond felt no strain. He was delighted to see all these people and know that at last he was back in the great world again. The only matters that worried him were that he had not been allowed to see Felix Leiter before the meeting to agree their stories and that he had been rather curtly advised by the High Commissioner’s Office that legal representation would not be necessary.

The Police Commissioner cleared his throat. He said, ‘Commander Bond, our meeting here today is largely a formality, but it is held on the Prime Minister’s instructions and with your doctor’s approval. There are many rumours running around the island and abroad and Sir Alexander Bustamante is most anxious to have them dispelled for the sake of justice and of the island’s good name. So this meeting is in the nature of a judicial inquiry having Prime Ministerial status. We very much hope that, if the conclusions of the meeting are satisfactory, there need be no more legal proceedings whatever. You understand?’

‘Yes,’ said Bond, who didn’t.

‘Now,’ the Commissioner spoke weightily. ‘The facts as ascertained are as follows. Recently there took place at the Thunderbird Hotel in the Parish of Westmoreland a meeting of what can only be described as foreign gangsters of outstanding notoriety, including representatives of the Soviet Secret Service, the Mafia, and the Cuban Secret Police. The objects of this meeting were, inter alia, sabotage of Jamaican installations in the cane industry, stimulation of illicit ganja-growing in the island and purchase of the crop for export, the bribery of a high Jamaican official with the object of installing gangster-run gambling in the island and sundry other malfeasances deleterious to law and order in Jamaica and to her international standing. Am I correct, Commander?’

‘Yes,’ said Bond, this time with a clear conscience.

‘Now.’ The Commissioner spoke with even greater emphasis. ‘The intentions of this subversive group became known to the Criminal Investigation Department of the Jamaican Police and the facts of the proposed assembly were placed before the Prime Minister in person by myself. Naturally the greatest secrecy was observed. A decision then had to be reached as to how this meeting was to be kept under surveillance and penetrated so that its intentions might be learned. Since friendly nations, including Britain and the United States, were involved, secret conversations took place with the representatives of the Ministry of Defence in Britain and of the Central Intelligence Agency in the United States. As a result, expert personnel in the shape of yourself, Mr Nicholson and Mr Leiter were generously made available, at no cost to the Jamaican Government, to assist in unveiling these secret machinations against Jamaica held on Jamaican soil.’ The Commissioner paused and looked round the room to see if he had stated the position correctly. Bond had noticed that Felix Leiter nodded his head vigorously with the others, but, in his case, in Bond’s direction.

Bond smiled. He had at last got the message. He also nodded his agreement.

‘Accordingly,’ continued the Commissioner, ‘and working throughout under the closest liaison and direction of the Jamaican C.I.D., Messrs Bond, Nicholson and Leiter carried out their duties in exemplary fashion. The true intentions of the gangsters were unveiled, but alas, in the process, the identity of at least one of the Jamaica-controlled agents was discovered and a battle royal took place during the course of which the following enemy agents – here there will be a list – were killed, thanks to the superior gunfire of Commander Bond and Mr Leiter, and the following – another list – by the destruction by Mr Leiter’s ingenious use of explosive of the Orange River Bridge on the Lucea–Green Island Harbour railway, now converted for tourist use. Unfortunately, two of the Jamaica-controlled agents received severe wounds from which they are now recovering in the Memorial Hospital. It remains to mention the names of Constable Percival Sampson of the Negril Constabulary who was first on the scene of the final battlefield, and Dr Lister Smith of Savannah La Mar who rendered vital first aid to Commander Bond and Mr Leiter. On the instructions of the Prime Minister, Sir Alexander Bustamante, a judicial inquiry was held this day at the bedside of Commander Bond and in the presence of Mr Felix Leiter to confirm the above facts. These, in the presence of Justice Morris Cargill of the Supreme Court, are now and hereby confirmed.’