Live and Let Die: A James Bond Novel (4 page)

Beyond, with its base held fast in a socket of stone, stood a large black wooden cross. A white death’s head was painted near the base, and over the crossbar were pulled the sleeves of a very old morning coat. Here also rested the brim of a battered bowler hat, through the torn crown of which the top of the cross projected. This totem, with which every peristyle must be equipped, is not a lampoon of the central event of the

Christian faith, but represents the God of the Cemeteries and the Chief of the Legion of the Dead, Baron Samedi. The Baron is paramount in all matters immediately beyond the tomb. He is Cerberus and Charon as well as Aeacus, Rhadamanthus and Pluto.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Tick-tock… tick-tock… tick-tock.’

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

‘Tick-tock… tick-tock… tick-tock.’

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

‘Tick-tock… tick-tock… tick-’

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

‘Tongtougtongtongtongtong…’

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

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

‘Tongtongtongtongtong…’

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

‘tong . . tong… tong… tong…tong…

‘C-R-A-C-K…’

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Who is it?” he called.

‘Okay. Dexter.’

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

‘Trippe, from Sabotage,’ announced Dexter.

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

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

While he worked, he asked Bond what had happened.

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

After a few minutes he sat up on his haunches.

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

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

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

The message was signed ‘1234567…?’ They stood up.

‘Hm,’ said Bond. ‘Bogeyman stuff.’

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

Bond told him of the black sedan on

55th Street

.

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

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

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

Live and Let Die

CHAPTER IV

THE BIG SWITCHBOARD

WHEN Dexter and his colleague had gone, taking the remains of the bomb with them, Bond took a damp towel and rubbed the smoke-mark off the wall. Then he rang for the waiter and, without explanation, told him to put the broken glass on his check and clear away the breakfast things. Then he took his hat and coat and went out on the street.

He spent the morning on Fifth Avenue and on Broadway, wandering aimlessly, gazing into the shop windows and watching the passing crowds. He gradually assimilated the casual gait and manners of a visitor from out of town, and when he tested himself out in a few shops and asked the way of several people he found that nobody looked at him twice.

He had a typical American meal at an eating house called ‘Gloryfried Ham-N-Eggs’ (’The Eggs We Serve Tomorrow Are Still in the Hens’) on Lexington Avenue and then took a cab downtown to police headquarters, where he was due to meet Leiter and Dexter at 2.30.

A Lieutenant Binswanger of Homicide, a suspicious and crusty officer in his late forties, announced that Commissioner Monahan had said that they were to have complete co-operation from the Police Department. What could he do for them? They examined Mr. Big’s police record, which more or less duplicated Dexter’s information, and they were shown the records and photographs of most of his known associates.

They went over the reports of the US Coastguard Service on the comings and goings of the yacht Secatur and also the comments of the US Customs Service, who had kept a close watch on the boat each time she had docked at St. Petersburg.

These confirmed that the yacht had put in at irregular intervals over the previous six months and that she always tied up in the Port of St. Petersburg at the wharf of the ‘Ourobouros Worm and Bait Shippers Inc.’, an apparently innocent concern whose main business was to sell live bait to fishing clubs throughout Florida, the Gulf of Mexico and further afield. The company also had a profitable sideline in sea-shells and coral for interior decoration, and a further sideline in tropical aquarium fish—particularly rare poisonous species for the research departments of medical and chemical foundations.

According to the proprietor, a Greek sponge-fisher from the neighbouring Tarpon Springs, the Secatur did big business with his company, bringing in cargoes of queen conchs and other shells from Jamaica and also highly prized varieties of tropical fish. These were purchased by Ourobouros Inc., stored in their warehouse and sold in bulk to wholesalers and retailers up and down the coast. The name of the Greek was Papagos. No criminal record.

The FBI, with the help of Naval Intelligence, had tried listening in to the Secatur’s wireless. But she kept off the air except for short messages before she sailed from

Cuba

or

Jamaica

and then transmitted en clair in a language which was unknown and completely indecipherable. The last notation on the file was to the effect that the operator was talking in ‘Language’, the secret Voodoo speech only used by initiates, and that every effort would be made to hire an expert from

Haiti

before the next sailing.

‘More gold been turning up lately,’ announced Lieutenant Binswanger as they walked back to his office from the Identification Bureau across the street. ‘

‘Bout a hundred coins a week in

Harlem

and

New York

alone. Want us to do anything about it? If you’re right and these are Commie funds, they must be pulling it in pretty fast while we sit on our asses doin’ nothing.’

‘Chief says to lay off,’ said Dexter. ‘Hope we’ll see some action before long.’

‘Well, the case is all yours,’ said Binswanger grudgingly. ‘But the Commissioner sure don’t like having this bastard crappin’ away on his own front doorstep while Mr. Hoover sits down in Washington well to leeward of the stink. Why don’t we pull him in on tax evasion or misuse of the mails or parkin’ in front of a hydrant or sumpn? Take him down to the Tombs and give’em the works? If the Feds won’t do it, we’d be glad to oblige.’

‘D’you want a race riot?’ objected Dexter sourly. ‘There’s nothing against him and you know it, and we know it. If he wasn’t sprung in half an hour by that black mouthpiece of his, those Voodoo drums would start beating from here to the

Deep South

. When they’re full of that stuff we all know what happens. Remember ‘35 and ‘43? You’d have to call out the Militia. We didn’t ask for the case. The President gave it us and we’ve got to stick with it.’

They were back in Binswanger’s drab office. They picked up their coats and hats.

‘Anyway, thanks for the help, Lootenant,’ said Dexter with forced cordiality, as they made their farewells. ‘Been most valuable.’

‘You’re welcome,’ said Binswanger stonily. ‘Elevator’s to your right.’ He closed the door firmly behind them.

Leiter winked at Bond behind Dexter’s back. They rode down to the main entrance on

Centre Street

in silence.

On the sidewalk, Dexter turned to them.

‘Had some instructions from

Washington

this morning,’ he said unemotionally. ‘Seems I’m to look after the

Harlem

end, and you two are to go down to

St. Petersburg

tomorrow. Leiter’s to find out what he can there and then move right on to

Jamaica

with you, Mr. Bond. That is,’ he added, ‘if you’d care to have him along. It’s your territory.’

‘Of course,’ said Bond. ‘I was going to ask if he could come anyway.’

‘Fine,’ said Dexter. Then I’ll tell

Washington

everything’s fixed. Anything else I can do for you? All communications with FBI, Washington, of course. Leiter’s got the names of our men in

Florida

, knows the Signals routine and so forth.’

‘If Leiter’s interested and if you don’t mind,’ said Bond, ‘I’d like very much to get up to

Harlem

this evening and have a look round. Might help to have some idea of what it looks like in Mr. Big’s back yard.’

Dexter reflected.

‘Okay,’ he said finally. ‘Probably no harm. But don’t show yourselves too much. And don’t get hurt,’ lie added. ‘There’s no one to help you up there. And don’t go stirring up a lot of trouble for us. This case isn’t ripe yet. Until it is, our policy with Mr. Big is “live and let live”.’

Bond looked quizzically at Captain Dexter.

‘In my job,’ he said, ‘when I come up against a man like this one, I have another motto. It’s “live and let die”.’

Dexter shrugged his shoulders. ‘Maybe,’ he said, ‘but you’re under my orders here, Mr. Bond, and I’d be glad if you’d accept them.’

‘Of course,’ said Bond, ‘and thanks for all your help. Hope you have luck with your end of the job.’

Dexter flagged a cab. They shook hands.

‘Bye, fellers,’ said Dexter briefly. ‘Stay alive.’ His cab pulled out into the uptown traffic.

Bond and Leiter smiled at each other.

‘Able guy, I should say,’ said Bond.

They’re all that in his show,’ said Leiter. ‘Bit inclined to be stuffed shirts. Very touchy about their rights. Always bickering with us or with the police. But I guess you have much the same problem in

England

.’

‘Oh of course,’ said Bond. ‘We’re always rubbing MI 5 up the wrong way. And they’re always stepping on the corns of the Special Branch. Scotland Yard,’ he explained. ‘Well, how about going up to

Harlem

tonight?’

‘Suits me,’ said Leiter. ‘I’ll drop you at the St. Regis and pick you up again about six-thirty. Meet you in the

King

Cole

Bar

, on the ground floor. Guess you want to take a look at Mr. Big,’ he grinned. ‘Well, so do I, but it wouldn’t have done to tell Dexter so.’ He flagged a Yellow Cab.

‘

St.

Regis

Hotel

. Fifth at 55th.’

They climbed into the overheated tin box reeking of last week’s cigar-smoke.

Leiter wound down a window.

‘Whaddya want ter do?’ asked the driver over his shoulder. ‘Gimme pneumony?’

‘Just that,’ said Leiter, ‘if it means saving us from this gas chamber.’

‘Wise guy, hn?’ said the driver, crashing tinnily through his gears. He took the chewed end of a cigar from behind his ear and held it up. ‘Two bits for three,’ he said in a hurt voice.

‘Twenty-four cents too much,’ said Leiter. The rest of the drive was passed in silence.

They parted at the hotel and Bond went up to his room. It was

four o’clock

. He asked the telephone operator to call him at six. For a while he looked out of the window of his bedroom. To his left, the sun was setting in a blaze of colour. In the skyscrapers the lights were coming on, turning the whole town into a golden honeycomb. Far below the streets were rivers of neon lighting, crimson, blue, green. The wind sighed sadly outside in the velvet dusk, lending his room still more warmth and security and luxury. He drew the curtains and turned on the soft lights over his bed. Then he took off his clothes and climbed between the fine percale sheets. He thought of the bitter weather in the

London

streets, the grudging warmth of the hissing gas-fire in his office at Headquarters, the chalked-up menu on the pub he had passed on his last day in

London

: ‘Giant Toad & 2 Veg.’

He stretched luxuriously. Very soon he was asleep.

Up in

Harlem

, at the big switchboard, ‘The Whisper’ was dozing over his racing form. All his lines were quiet. Suddenly a light shone on the right of the board - an important light.

‘Yes, Boss,’ he said softly into his headphone. He couldn’t have spoken any louder if he had wished to. He had been born on ‘Lung Block’, on

Seventh Avenue

, at

142nd Street

, where death from TB is twice as high as anywhere in

New York

. Now, he only had part of one lung left.

‘Tell all “Eyes”,’ said a slow, deep voice,’ to watch out from now on. Three men.’ A brief description of Leiter, Bond and Dexter followed. ‘May be coming in this evening or tomorrow. Tell them to watch particularly on First to Eight and the other Avenues. The night spots too, in case they’re missed coming in. They’re not to be molested. Call me when you get a sure fix. Got it?’

‘Yes, Sir, Boss,’ said The Whisper, breathing fast. The voice went quiet. The operator took the whole handful of plugs, and soon the big switchboard was alive with winking lights. Softly, urgently, he whispered on into the evening.

At

six o’clock

Bond was awakened by the soft burr of the telephone. He took a cold shower and dressed carefully. He put on a garishly striped tie and allowed a broad wedge of bandana to protrude from his breast pocket. He slipped the chamois leather holster over his shirt so that it hung three inches below his left armpit. He whipped at the mechanism of the Beretta until all eight bullets lay on the bed. Then he packed them back into the magazine, loaded the gun, put up the safety-catch and slipped it into the holster.

He picked up the pair of Moccasin casuals, felt their toes and weighed them in his hand. Then he reached under the bed and pulled out a pair of his own shoes he had carefully kept out of the suitcase full of his belongings the FBI had taken away from him that morning.

He put them on and felt better equipped to face the evening.

Under the leather, the toe-caps were lined with steel.

At

six twenty-five

he went down to the

King

Cole

Bar

and chose a table near the entrance and against the wall. A few minutes later Felix Leiter came in. Bond hardly recognized him. His mop of straw-coloured hair was now jet black and he wore a dazzling blue suit with a white shirt and a black-and-white polka-dot tie.

Leiter sat down with a broad grin.

‘I suddenly decided to take these people seriously,’ he explained. ‘This stuff’s only a rinse. It’ll come off in the morning. I hope,’ he added.

Leiter ordered medium-dry Martinis with a slice of lemon peel. He stipulated House of Lords gin and Martini Rossi. The American gin, a much higher proof than English gin, tasted harsh to Bond. He reflected that he would have to be careful what he drank that evening.