Fleming, Ian - Bond 14 - (1966) Octopussy

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OCTOPUSSY

You know what?" said Major Dexter Smythe to the octopus. "You're going to have a real treat today if I can manage it."

He had spoken aloud, and his breath had steamed up the glass of his Pirelli mask. He put his feet down to the sand beside the coral

boulder and stood up. The water reached to his armpits. He took off the mask and spat into it, rubbed the spit round the glass, rinsed

it clean, and pulled the rubber band of the mask back over his head. He bent down again.

The eye in the mottled brown sack was still watching him carefully from the hole in the coral, but now the tip of a single small

tentacle wavered hesitatingly an inch or two out of the shadows and quested vaguely with its pink suckers uppermost. Dexter

Smythe smiled with satisfaction. Given time—perhaps one more month on top of the two during which he had been chumming the

octopus—and he would have tamed the darling. But he wasn't going to have that month. Should he take a chance today and reach

down and offer his hand, instead of the expected lump of raw meat on the end of his spear, to the tentacle? Shake it by the hand, so

to speak? No, Pussy, he thought. I can't quite trust you yet. Almost certainly other tentacles would whip out of the hole and up his

arm. He only needed to be dragged down less than two feet for the cork valve on his mask to automatically close, and he would be

suffocated inside it or, if he tore it off, drowned. He might get in a quick lucky jab with his spear, but it would take more than that to

kill Pussy. No. Perhaps later in the day. It would be rather like playing Russian roulette, and at about the same five-to-one odds. It

might be a quick, a whimsical, way out of his troubles! But not now. It would leave the interesting question unsolved. And he had

promised that nice Professor Bengry at the Institute.... Dexter Smythe swam leisurely off toward the reef, his eyes questing for one

shape only, the squat, sinister wedge of a scorpionfish, or, as Bengry would put it, Scorpaena plumieri.

Major Dexter Smythe, O.B.E., Royal Marines (Retd.), was the remains of a once brave and resourceful officer and of a handsome

man who had had the sexual run of his teeth all his life, particularly among the Wrens and Wracs and ATS who manned the

communications and secretariat of the very special task force to which he had been attached at the end of his service career. Now he

was fifty-four and slightly bald, and his belly sagged in his Jantzen trunks. And he had had two coronary thromboses, the second

(the "second warning" as his doctor, Jimmy Greaves, who had been one of their high poker game at Prince's Club when Dexter

Smythe had first come to Jamaica, had half jocularly put it) only a month before. But, in his well-chosen clothes, with his varicose

veins out of sight, and with his stomach flattened by a discreet support belt behind an immaculate cummerbund, he was still a fine

figure of a man at a cocktail party or dinner on the North Shore. And it was a mystery to his friends and neighbors why, in defiance

of the two ounces of whiskey and the ten cigarettes a day to which his doctor had rationed him, he persisted in smoking like a

chimney and going to bed drunk, if amiably drunk, every night.

The truth of the matter was that Dexter Smythe had arrived at the frontier of the death wish. The origins of this state of mind were

many and not all that complex. He was irretrievably tied to Jamaica, and tropical sloth had gradually riddled him so that, while

outwardly he appeared a piece of fairly solid hardwood, inside the varnished surface, the termites of sloth, self-indulgence, guilt over

an ancient sin, and general disgust with himself had eroded his once hard core into dust. Since the death of Mary two years before,

he had loved no one. (He wasn't even sure that he had really loved her, but he knew that, every hour of the day, he missed her love of

him and her gay, untidy, chiding, and often irritating presence.) And though he ate their canapés and drank their martinis, he had

nothing but contempt for the international riffraff with whom he consorted on the North Shore. He could perhaps have made friends

with the more solid elements—the gentleman-farmers inland, the plantation owners on the coast, the professional men, the

politicians—but that would mean regaining some serious purpose in life which his sloth, his spiritual accidie, prevented, and cutting

down on the bottle, which he was definitely unwilling to do. So Major Smythe was bored, bored to death, and, but for one factor in

his life, he would long ago have swallowed the bottle of barbiturates he had easily acquired from a local doctor. The lifeline that kept

him clinging to the edge of the cliff was a tenuous one. Heavy drinkers veer toward an exaggeration of their basic temperaments, the

classic four—sanguine, phlegmatic, choleric, and melancholic. The sanguine drunk goes gay to the point of hysteria and idiocy; the

phlegmatic sinks into a morass of sullen gloom; the choleric is the fighting drunk of the cartoonists who spends much of his life in

prison for smashing people and things; and the melancholic succumbs to self-pity, mawkishness, and tears. Major Smythe was a

melancholic who had slid into a drooling fantasy woven around the birds and insects and fish that inhabited the five acres of

Wavelets (the name he had given his small villa was symptomatic), its beach, and the coral reef beyond. The fish were his particular

favorites. He referred to them as "people," and since reef fish stick to their territories as closely as do most small birds, he knew

them all, after two years, intimately, "loved" them, and believed that they loved him in return.

They certainly knew him, as the denizens of zoos know their keepers, because he was a daily and a regular provider, scraping off

algae and stirring up the sand and rocks for the bottom-feeders, breaking up sea eggs and sea urchins for the small carnivores, and

bringing out scraps of offal for the larger ones. And now, as he swam slowly and heavily up and down the reef and through the

channels that led out to deep water, his "people" swarmed around him fearlessly and expectantly, darting at the tip of the three-

pronged spear they knew only as a prodigal spoon, flirting right up to the glass of the Pirelli, and even, in the case of the fearless,

pugnacious demoiselles, nipping softly at his feet and legs.

Part of Major Smythe's mind took in all these brilliantly colored little "people" and he greeted them in unspoken words.

("Morning, Beau Gregory" to the dark blue demoiselle sprinkled with bright blue spots—the jewelfish that exactly resembles the

starlit fashioning of a bottle of Guerlain's Dans La Nuit; "Sorry. Not today, sweetheart" to a fluttering butterflyfish with false black

eyes on its tail; and "You're too fat anyway, Blue Boy," to an indigo parrotfish that must have weighed a good ten pounds.) But

today he had a job to do and his eyes were searching for only one of his "people"—his only enemy on the reef, the only one he killed

on sight, a scorpionfish.

The scorpionfish inhabits most of the southern waters of the world, and the rascasse that is the foundation of bouillabaisse belongs

to the family. The West Indian variety runs up to only about twelve inches long and perhaps a pound ha weight. It is by far the

ugliest fish in the sea, as if nature were giving warning. It is a mottled brownish gray with a heavy wedge-shaped shaggy head. It has

fleshy pendulous "eyebrows" that droop over angry red eyes and a coloration and broken silhouette that are perfect camouflage on

the reef. Though a small fish, its heavily toothed mouth is so wide that it can swallow whole most of the smaller reef fishes, but its

supreme weapon lies in its erectile dorsal fins, the first few of which, acting on contact like hypodermic needles, are fed by poison

glands containing enough dotoxin to kill a man if they merely graze him in a vulnerable spot—in an artery, for instance, or over the

heart or in the groin. It constitutes the only real danger to the reef swimmer, far more dangerous than the barracuda or the shark,

because, supreme in its confidence in its camouflage and armory, it flees before nothing except the very close approach of a foot or

actual contact. Then it flits only a few yards, on wide and bizarrely striped pectorals, and settles again watchfully either on the

sand, where it looks like a lump of overgrown coral, or among the rocks and seaweed where it virtually disappears. And Major

Smythe was determined to find one and spear it and give it to his octopus to see if it would take it or spurn it—to see if one of the

ocean's great predators would recognize the deadliness of another, know of its poison. Would the octopus consume the belly and

leave the spines? Would it eat the lot? And if so, would it suffer from the poison? These were the questions Bengry at the Institute

wanted answered, and today, since it was going to be the beginning of the end of Major Smythe's life at Wavelets—and though it

might mean the end of his darling Octopussy—Major Smythe had decided to find out the answers and leave one tiny memorial to his

now futile life in some dusty corner of the Institute's marine biological files.

For, in only the last couple of hours, Major Dexter Smythe's already dismal life had changed very much for the worse. So much

for the worse that he would be lucky if, in a few weeks' time—time for an exchange of cables via Government House and the

Colonial Office to the Secret Service and thence to Scotland Yard and the Public Prosecutor, and for Major Smythe's transportation

to London with a police escort—he got away with a sentence of imprisonment for life.

And all this because of a man called Bond, Commander James Bond, who had turned up at ten-thirty that morning in a taxi from

Kingston.

* * *

The day had started normally. Major Smythe had awakened from his Seconal sleep, swallowed a couple of Panadols (his heart

condition forbade him aspirin), showered, skimped his breakfast under the umbrella-shaped sea almonds, and spent an hour feeding

the remains of his breakfast to the birds. He then took his prescribed doses of anticoagulant and blood-pressure pills and killed time

with the Daily Gleaner until it was time for his elevenses, which, for some months now, he had advanced to ten-thirty. He had just

poured himself the first of two stiff brandy and ginger ales (The Drunkard's Drink) when he heard the car coming up the drive.

Luna, his colored housekeeper, came out into the garden and announced "Gemmun to see you, Major."

"What's his name?"

"Hun doan say, Major. Him say to tell you him come from Govment House."

Major Smythe was wearing nothing but a pair of old khaki shorts and sandals. He said, "All right, Luna. Put him in the living

room and say I won't be a moment." And he went round the back way into his bedroom and put on a white bush shirt and trousers

and brushed his hair. Government House! Now what the hell?

As soon as he had walked through into the living room and seen the tall man in the dark blue tropical suit standing at the picture

window looking out to sea, Major Smythe had somehow sensed bad news. And, when the man had turned slowly toward him and

looked at him with watchful, serious gray-blue eyes, he had known that this was officialdom, and when his cheery smile was not

returned, inimical officialdom. And. a chill had run down Major Smythe's spine. "They" had somehow found out.

"Well, well. I'm Smythe. I gather you're from Government House. How's Sir Kenneth?"

There was somehow no question of shaking hands. The man said, "I haven't met him. I only arrived a couple of days ago. I've

been out round the island most of the time. My name's Bond, James Bond. I'm from the Ministry of Defense."

Major Smythe remembered the hoary euphemism for the Secret Service. He said bonhomously, "Oh. The old firm?"

The question had been ignored. "Is there somewhere we can talk?"

"Rather. Anywhere you like. Here or in the garden? What about a drink?" Major Smythe clinked the ice in the glass he still held in

his hand. "Rum and ginger's the local poison. I prefer the ginger by itself." The lie came out with the automatic smoothness of the

alcoholic.

"No thanks. And here would be fine." The man leaned negligently against the wide mahogany windowsill.

Major Smythe sat down and threw a jaunty leg over the low arm of one of the comfortable planters' chairs he had had copied from

an original by the local cabinetmaker. He pulled out the drink coaster from the other arm, took a deep pull at his glass, and slid it,

with a consciously steady hand, down into the hole in the wood. "Well," he said cheerily, looking the other man straight in the eyes,

"what can I do for you? Somebody been up to some dirty work on the North Shore and you need a spare hand? Be glad to get into

harness again. It's been a long time since those days, but I can still remember some of the old routines."

"Do you mind if I smoke?" The man had already got his cigarette case in his hand. It was a flat gun-metal one that would hold

around twenty-five. Somehow this small sign of a shared weakness comforted Major Smythe.

"Of course, my dear fellow." He made a move to get up, his lighter ready.

"It's all right, thanks." James Bond had already lit his cigarette. "No, it's nothing local. I want to... I've been sent out to... ask you to

recall your work for the Service at the end of the war." James Bond paused and looked down at Major Smythe carefully.

"Particularly the time when you were working with the Miscellaneous Objectives Bureau."

Major Smythe laughed sharply. He had known it. He had known it for absolutely sure. But when it came out of this man's mouth,

the laugh had been forced out of Major Smythe like the scream of a hit man. "Oh Lord, yes. Good old MOB. That was a lark all

right." He laughed again. He felt the anginal pain, brought on by the pressure of what he knew was coming, build up across his

chest. He dipped his hand into his trouser pocket, tilted the little bottle into the palm of his hand, and slipped the white TNT pill

under his tongue. He was amused to see the tension coil up in the other man, the way the eyes narrowed watchfully. It's all right, my

dear fellow. This isn't a death pill. He said, "You troubled with acidosis? No? It slays me when I go on a bender. Last night. Party at

Jamaica Inn. One really ought to stop thinking one's always twenty-five. Anyway, let's get back to MOB Force. Not many of us left,

I suppose." He felt the pain across his chest withdraw into its lair. "Something to do with the Official History?"

James Bond looked down at the tip of his cigarette. "Not exactly."

"I expect you know I wrote most of the chapter on the Force for the War Book. It's fifteen years since then. Doubt if I'd have much

to add today."

"Nothing more about that operation in the Tirol—place called Oberaurach, about a mile east of Kitzbühel?"

One of the names he had been living with for fifteen years forced another harsh laugh out of Major Smythe. "That was a piece of

cake! You've never seen such a shambles. All those Gestapo toughs with their doxies. All of 'em hog-drunk. They'd kept their files

all ticketty-boo. Handed them over without a murmur. Hoped that'd earn 'em easy treatment I suppose. We gave the stuff a first

going-over and shipped all the bods off to the Munich camp. Last I heard of them. Most of them hanged for war crimes I expect. We

handed the bumf over to HQ at Salzburg. Then we went on up the Mittersill valley after another hideout." Major Smythe took a

good pull at his drink and lit a cigarette. He looked up. "That's the long and the short of it."

"You were Number Two at the time, I think. The CO was an American, a Colonel King from Patton's army."

"That's right. Nice fellow. Wore a mustache, which isn't like an American. Knew his way among the local wines. Quite a civilized

chap."

"In his report about the operation he wrote that he handed you all the documents for a preliminary run-through as you were the

German expert with the unit. Then you gave them all back to him with your comments?" James Bond paused. "Every single one of

them?"

Major Smythe ignored the innuendo. "That's right. Mostly lists of names. Counterintelligence dope. The CI people in Salzburg

were very pleased with the stuff. Gave them plenty of new leads. I expect the originals are lying about somewhere. They'll have been

used for the Nuremberg Trials. Yes, by Jove!"—Major Smythe was reminiscent, pally—"those were some of the jolliest months of

my life, haring around the country with MOB Force. Wine, women, and song! And you can say that again!"

Here, Major Smythe was saying the whole truth. He had had a dangerous and uncomfortable war until 1945. When the

commandos were formed in 1941, he had volunteered and been seconded from the Royal Marines to Combined Operations

Headquarters under Mountbatten. There his excellent German (his mother had come from Heidelberg) had earned him the

unenviable job of being advanced interrogator on commando operations across the Channel. He had been lucky to get away from

two years of this work unscathed and with the O.B.E. (Military), which was sparingly awarded in the last war. And then, in

preparation for the defeat of Germany, the Miscellaneous Objectives Bureau had been formed jointly by the Secret Service and

Combined Operations, and Major Smythe had been given the temporary rank of lieutenant colonel and told to form a unit whose job

would be the cleaning up of Gestapo and Abwehr hideouts when the collapse of Germany came about. The OSS got to hear of the

scheme and insisted on getting into the act to cope with the American wing of the front, and the result was the creation of not one

but six units that went into operation in Germany and Austria on the day of surrender. They were units of twenty men, each with a

light armored car, six jeeps, a wireless truck, and three lorries, and they were controlled by a joint Anglo-American headquarters in

SHAEF, which also fed them with targets from the Army Intelligence units and from the SIS and OSS. Major Smythe had been

Number Two of "A" Force, which had been allotted the Tirol—an area full of good hiding places with easy access to Italy and

perhaps out of Europe—that was known to have been chosen as funkhole Number One by the people MOB Force was after. And, as

Major Smythe had just told Bond, they had had themselves a ball. All without firing a shot—except, that is, two fired by Major

Smythe.

James Bond said casually, "Does the name of Hannes Oberhauser ring a bell?"

Major Smythe frowned, trying to remember. "Can't say it does." It was eighty degrees in the shade, but he shivered.

"Let me refresh your memory. On the same day as those documents were given to you to look over, you made inquiries at the

Tiefenbrünner Hotel, where you were billeted, for the best mountain guide in Kitzbühel. You were referred to Oberhauser. The next

day you asked your CO for a day's leave, which was granted. Early next morning you went to Oberhauser's chalet, put him under

close arrest, and drove him away in your jeep. Does that ring a bell?"

That phrase about "refreshing your memory." How often had Major Smythe himself used it when he was trying to trap a German

liar? Take your time! You've been ready for something like this for years. Major Smythe shook his head doubtfully. "Can't say it

does."

"A man with graying hair and a gammy leg. Spoke some English, he'd been a ski teacher before the war."

Major Smythe looked candidly into the cold, clear blue eyes. "Sorry. Can't help you."

James Bond took a small blue leather notebook out of his inside pocket and turned the leaves. He stopped turning them. He looked

up. "At that time, as side arms, you were carrying a regulation Webley-Scott forty-five with the serial number eight-nine-six-seven-

three-sixty-two."

"It was certainly a Webley. Damned clumsy weapon. Hope they've got something more like the Luger or the heavy Beretta these

days. But I can't say I ever took a note of the number."

"The number's right enough," said James Bond. "I've got the date of its issue to you by HQ and the date when you turned it in.

You signed the book both times."

Major Smythe shrugged. "Well then, it must have been my gun. But"—he put rather angry impatience into his voice—"what, if I

may ask, is all this in aid of?"

James Bond looked at him almost with curiosity. He said, and now his voice was not unkind, "You know what it is all about,

Smythe." He paused and seemed to reflect. "Tell you what. I'll go out into the garden for ten minutes or so. Give you time to think

things over. Give me a hail." He added seriously "It'll make things so much easier for you if you come out with the story in your own

words."

Bond walked to the door into the garden. He turned around. "I'm afraid it's only a question of dotting the i's and crossing the t's.

You see I had a talk with the Foo brothers in Kingston yesterday." He stepped out onto the lawn.

Something in Major Smythe was relieved. Now at least the battle of wits, the trying to invent alibis, the evasions, were over. If this

man Bond had got to the Foos, to either of them, they would have spilled the beans. The last thing they wanted was to get in bad

with the government, and anyway there was only about six inches of the stuff left.

Major Smythe got briskly to his feet and went to the loaded sideboard and poured himself out another brandy and ginger ale,

almost fifty-fifty. He might as well live it up while there was still time! The future wouldn't hold many more of these for him. He

went back to his chair and lit his twentieth cigarette of the day. He looked at his watch. It said eleven-thirty. If he could be rid of the

chap in an hour, he'd have plenty of time with his "people." He sat and drank and marshaled his thoughts. He could make the story

long or short, put in the weather and the way the flowers and pines had smelled on the mountain, or he could cut it short. He would

cut it short.

* * *

Up in that big double bedroom in the Tiefenbrünner, with the wads of buff and gray paper spread out on the spare bed, he hadn't

been looking for anything special, just taking samples here and there and concentrating on the ones marked, in red,

KOMMANDOSACHE—HÖCHST VERTRAULICH. There weren't many of these, and they were mostly confidential reports on

German top brass, intercepts of broken allied ciphers, and information about the whereabouts of secret dumps. Since these were the

main targets of "A" Force, Major Smythe had scanned them with particular excitement—food, explosives, guns, espionage records,

files of Gestapo personnel. A tremendous haul! And then, at the bottom of the packet, there had been the single envelope sealed with

red wax and the notation ONLY TO BE OPENED IN FINAL EMERGENCY. The envelope contained one single sheet of paper. It

was unsigned, and the few words were written in red ink. The heading said VALUTA, and beneath it was written: WILDE KAISER.

FRANZISKANER HALT. 100 M. ÖSTLICH STEINHÜGEL. WAFFENKISTE. ZWEI BAR 24 KT. Under that was a list of

measurements in centimeters. Major Smythe held his hands apart as if telling a story about a fish he had caught. The bars would be

about as wide as his shoulders and about two by four inches. And one single English sovereign of only eighteen carats was selling

nowadays for two to three pounds! This was a bloody fortune! Forty, fifty thousand pounds worth! Maybe even a hundred! He didn't

stop to think, but, quite coolly and speedily, in case anyone should come in, he put a match to the paper and the envelope, ground the

ashes to powder, and swilled them down the lavatory. Then he took out his large-scale Austrian ordnance map of the area and in a

moment had his finger on the Franziskaner Halt. It was marked as an uninhabited mountaineer's refuge on a saddle just below the

highest of the easterly peaks of the Kaiser mountains, that awe-inspiring range of giant stone teeth that gave Kitzbühel its threatening

northern horizon. And the cairn of stones would be about there—his fingernail pointed—and the whole bloody lot was only ten

miles and perhaps a five hours' climb away!

The beginning had been as this fellow Bond had described. He had gone to Oberhauser's chalet at four in the morning, had

arrested him, and had told his weeping, protesting family that Smythe was taking him to an interrogation camp in Munich. If the

guide's record was clean he would be back home within a week. If the family kicked up a fuss it would only make trouble for

Oberhauser. Smythe had refused to give his name and had had the forethought to shroud the numbers on his jeep. In twenty-four

hours, "A" Force would be on its way, and by the time military government got to Kitzbühel, the incident would already be buried

under the morass of the Occupation tangle.

Oberhauser had been a nice enough chap once he had recovered from his fright, and when Smythe talked knowingly about skiing

and climbing, both of which he had done before the war, the pair, as Smythe intended, became quite pally. Their route lay along the

bottom of the Kaiser range to Kufstein, and Smythe drove slowly, making admiring comments on the peaks that were now flushed

with the pink of dawn. Finally, below the peak of gold, as he called it to himself, he slowed to a halt and pulled off the road into a

grassy glade. He turned in his seat and said with an assumption of candor, "Oberhauser, you are a man after my own heart. We share

many interests together, and from your talk, and from the man I think you to be, I am sure you did not cooperate with the Nazis.

Now I will tell you what I will do. We will spend the day climbing on the Kaiser, and I will then drive you back to Kitzbühel and

report to my commanding officer that you have been cleared at Munich." He grinned cheerfully. "Now. How about that?"

The man had been near to tears of gratitude. But could he have some kind of paper to show that he was a good citizen? Certainly.

Major Smythe's signature would be quite enough. The pact was made, the jeep was driven up a track and well hidden from the road,

and they were off at a steady pace, climbing up through the pine-scented foothills.

Smythe was well dressed for the climb. He had nothing on except his bush shut, shorts, and a pair of the excellent rubber-soled

boots issued to American parachutists. His only burden was the Webley-Scott, and, tactfully, for Oberhauser was after all one of the

enemy, Oberhauser didn't suggest that he leave it behind some conspicuous rock. Oberhauser was in his best suit and boots, but that

didn't seem to bother him, and he assured Major Smythe that ropes and pitons would not be needed for their climb and that there was

a hut directly up above them where they could rest. It was called the Franziskaner Halt.

"Is it indeed?" said Major Smythe.

"Yes, and below it there is a small glacier. Very pretty, but we will climb round it. There are many crevasses."

"Is that so?" said Major Smythe thoughtfully. He examined the back of Oberhauser's head, now beaded with sweat. After all, he

was only a bloody kraut, or at any rate of that ilk. What would one more or less matter? It was all going to be as easy as falling off a

log. The only thing that worried Major Smythe was getting the bloody stuff down the mountain. He decided that he would somehow

sling the bars across his back. After all, he could slide it most of the way in its ammunition box or whatnot.

It was a long, dreary hack up the mountain, and when they were above the treeline, the sun came up and it was very hot. And now

it was all rock and scree, and their long zigzags sent boulders and rubble rumbling and crashing down the slope that got ever steeper

as they approached the final crag, gray and menacing, that lanced away into the blue above them. They were both naked to the waist

and sweating, so that the sweat ran down their legs into their boots, but despite Oberhauser's limp, they kept up a good pace, and

when they stopped for a drink and a swabdown at a hurtling mountain stream, Oberhauser congratulated Major Smythe on his

fitness. Major Smythe, his mind full of dreams, said curtly and untruthfully that all English soldiers were fit, and they went on.

The rock face wasn't difficult. Major Smythe had known that it wouldn't be or the climbers' hut couldn't have been built on the

shoulder. Toeholds had been cut in the face, and there were occasional iron pegs hammered into crevices. But he couldn't have found

the more difficult traverses by himself, and he congratulated himself on deciding to bring a guide.

Once, Oberhauser's hand, testing for a grip, dislodged a great slab of rock, loosened by five years of snow and frost, and sent it

crashing down the mountain. Major Smythe suddenly thought about noise. "Many people around here?" he asked as they watched

the boulder hurtle down into the treeline.

"Not a soul until you get near Kufstein," said Oberhauser. He gestured along the arid range of high peaks. "No grazing. Little

water. Only the climbers come here. And since the beginning of the war...." He left the phrase unfinished.

They skirted the blue-fanged glacier below the final climb to the shoulder. Major Smythe's careful eyes took in the width and

depth of the crevasses. Yes, they would fit! Directly above them, perhaps a hundred feet up under the lee of the shoulder, were the

weatherbeaten boards of the hut. Major Smythe measured the angle of the slope. Yes, it was almost a straight dive down. Now or

later? He guessed later. The line of the last traverse wasn't very clear.

They were up at the hut in five hours flat. Major Smythe said he wanted to relieve himself and wandered casually along the

shoulder to the east, paying no heed to the beautiful panoramas of Austria and Bavaria that stretched away on either side of him

perhaps fifty miles into the heat haze. He counted his paces carefully. At exactly one hundred and twenty there was the cairn of

stones, a loving memorial perhaps to some long dead climber. Major Smythe, knowing differently, longed to tear it apart there and

then. Instead he took out his Webley-Scott, squinted down the barrel, and twirled the cylinder. Then he walked back.

It was cold up there at ten thousand feet or more, and Oberhauser had got into the hut and was busy preparing a fire. Major

Smythe controlled his horror at the sight. "Oberhauser," he said cheerfully, "come out and show me some of the sights. Wonderful

view up here."

"Certainly, Major." Oberhauser followed Major Smythe out of the hut. Outside, he fished in his hip pocket and produced

something wrapped in paper. He undid the paper to reveal a hard wrinkled sausage. He offered it to the major. "It is only what we

call a Soldat," he said shyly. "Smoked meat. Very tough but good." He smiled. "It is like what they eat in Wild West films. What is

the name?"

"Pemmican," said the major. Then—and later this had slightly disgusted him with himself—he said, "Leave it in the hut. We will

share it later. Come over here. Can we see Innsbruck? Show me the view on this side."

Oberhauser bobbed into the hut and out again. The major fell in just behind him as he talked, pointing out this or that distant

church spire or mountain peak.

They came to the point above the glacier. Major Smythe drew his revolver, and at a range of two feet, fired two bullets into the

base of Hannes Oberhauser's skull. No muffing! Dead-on!

The impact of the bullets knocked the guide clean off his feet and over the edge. Major Smythe craned over. The body hit twice

only, and then crashed onto the glacier. But not onto its fissured origin. Halfway down and on a patch of old snow! "Hell!" said

Major Smythe.

The deep boom of the two shots, which had been batting to and fro among the mountains, died away. Major Smythe took one last

look at the black splash on the white snow and hurried off along the shoulder. First things first!

He started on the top of the cairn, working as if the devil were after him, throwing the rough, heavy stones indiscriminately down

the mountain to right or left His hands began to bleed, but he hardly noticed. Now there were only two feet or so left, and nothing!

Bloody nothing! He bent to the last pile, scrabbling feverishly. And then! Yes! The edge of a metal box. A few more rocks away,

and there was the whole of it! A good old gray Wehrmacht ammunition box with the trace of some lettering still on it. Major Smythe

gave a groan of joy. He sat down on a hard piece of rock, and his mind went orbiting through Bentleys, Monte Carlo, penthouse

flats, Cartier's, champagne, caviar, and, incongruously (but because he loved golf), a new set of Henry Cotton irons.

Drunk with his dreams, Major Smythe sat there looking at the gray box for a full quarter of an hour. Then he looked at his watch

and got briskly to his feet. Time to get rid of the evidence. The box had a handle at each end. Major Smythe had expected it to be

heavy. He had mentally compared its probable weight with the heaviest thing he had ever carried—a forty-pound salmon he had

caught in Scotland just before the war—but the box was certainly double that weight, and he was only just able to lift it out of its last

bed of rocks onto the thin alpine grass. Then he slung his handkerchief through one of the handles and dragged it clumsily along the

shoulder to the hut. Then he sat down on the stone doorstep, and, his eyes never leaving the box, he tore at Oberhauser's smoked

sausage with his strong teeth and thought about getting his fifty thousand pounds—for that was the figure he put it at—down the

mountain and into a new hiding place.

Oberhauser's sausage was a real mountaineer's meal—tough, well-fatted, and strongly garlicked. Bits of it stuck uncomfortably

between Major Smythe's teeth. He dug them out with a sliver of matchstick and spat them on the ground. Then his Intelligence-wise

mind came into operation, and he meticulously searched among the stones and grass, picked up the scraps, and swallowed them.

From now on he was a criminal—as much a criminal as if he had robbed a bank and shot the guard. He was a cop turned robber. He

must remember that! It would be death if he didn't—death instead of Carder's. All he had to do was to take infinite pains. He would

take those pains, and by God they would be infinite! Then, for ever after, he would be rich and happy. After taking ridiculously

minute trouble to eradicate any sign of entry into the hut, he dragged the ammunition box to the edge of the last rock face and aiming

it away from the glacier, tipped it, with a prayer, into space.

The gray box, turning slowly in the air, hit the first steep slope below the rock face, bounded another hundred feet, and landed

with an iron clang in some loose scree and stopped. Major Smythe couldn't see if it had burst open. He didn't mind one way or the

other. He had tried to open it without success. Let the mountain do it for him!

With a last look around, he went over the edge. He took great care at each piton, tested each handhold and foothold before he put

his weight on it. Coming down, he was a much more valuable life than he had been climbing up. He made for the glacier and

trudged across the melting snow to the black patch on the icefield. There was nothing to be done about footprints. It would take only

a few days for them to be melted down by the sun. He got to the body. He had seen many corpses during the war, and the blood and

broken limbs meant nothing to him. He dragged the remains of Oberhauser to the nearest deep crevasse and toppled it in. Then he

went carefully around the Up of the crevasse and kicked the snow overhang down on top of the body. Then, satisfied with his work,

he retraced his steps, placing his feet exactly in his old footprints, and made his way on down the slope to the ammunition box.

Yes, the mountain had burst open the lid for him. Almost casually he tore away the cartridge-paper wrappings. The two great

hunks of metal glittered up at him under the sun. There were the same markings on each—the swastika in a circle below an eagle,

and the date 1943—the mint marks of the Reichsbank. Major Smythe gave a nod of approval. He replaced the paper and hammered

the crooked lid half-shut with a rock. Then he tied the lanyard of his Webley around one of the handles and moved on down the

mountain, dragging his clumsy burden behind him.

It was now one o'clock, and the sun beat fiercely down on his naked chest, frying him in his own sweat. His reddened shoulders

began to burn. So did his face. To hell with them! He stopped at the stream from the glacier, dipped his handkerchief in the water,

and tied it across his forehead. Then he drank deeply and went on, occasionally cursing the ammunition box as it caught up with him

and banged at his heels. But these discomforts, the sunburn and the bruises, were nothing compared with what he would have to face

when he got down to the valley and the going leveled out. For the time being he had gravity on his side. There would come at least a

mile when he would have to carry the blasted stuff. Major Smythe winced at the thought of the havoc the eighty pounds or so would

wreak on his burned back. "Oh well," he said to himself almost lightheadedly, "il faut souffrir pour être millionaire!"

When he got to the bottom and the time had come, he sat and rested on a mossy bank under the firs. Then he spread out his bush

shirt and heaved the two bars out of the box and onto its center and tied the tails of the shirt as firmly as he could to where the

sleeves sprang from the shoulders. After digging a shallow hole in the bank and burying the empty box, he knotted the two cuffs of

the sleeves firmly together, knelt down and slipped his head through the rough sling, got his hands on either side of the knot to

protect his neck, and staggered to his feet, crouching far forward so as not to be pulled over on his back. Then, crushed under half his

own weight, his back on fire under the contact with his burden, and his breath rasping through his constricted lungs, coolie-like, he

shuffled slowly off down the little path through the trees.

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摘要：

1OCTOPUSSYYouknowwhat?"saidMajorDexterSmythetotheoctopus."You'regoingtohavearealtreattodayifIcanmanageit."Hehadspokenaloud,andhisbreathhadsteameduptheglassofhisPirellimask.Heputhisfeetdowntothesandbesidethecoralboulderandstoodup.Thewaterreachedtohisarmpits.Hetookoffthemaskandspatintoit,rubbedthespit...

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Fleming, Ian - Bond 14 - (1966) Octopussy

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