Fleming, Ian - Bond 04 - (1956) Diamonds are Forever

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To J.F.C.B.
and E.L.C.
and to the memory of
W.W.Jr., at Saratoga. 1954 and
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THE PIPELINE OPENS
WITH its two fighting claws held forward like a wrestler's arms the big pandinus scorpion emerged with a dry rustle from the fin-
ger-sized hole under the rock.
There was a small patch of hard, flat earth outside the hole and the scorpion stood in the centre of this on the tips of its four pairs
of legs, its nerves and muscles braced for a quick retreat and its senses questing for the minute vibrations which would decide its
next move.
The moonlight, glittering down through the great thorn bush, threw sapphire highlights off the hard, black polish of the six-inch
body and glinted palely on the moist white sting which protruded from the last segment of the tail, now curved over parallel with the
scorpion's flat back.
Slowly the sting slid home into its sheath and the nerves in the poison sac at its base relaxed. The scorpion had decided. Greed had
won over fear.
Twelve inches away, at the bottom of a sharp slope of sand, the small beetle was concerned only with trudging on towards better
pastures than he had found under the thorn bush, and the swift rush of the scorpion down the slope gave him no1 time to open his
wings. The beetle's legs waved in protest as the sharp claw snapped round his body, and then the sting lanced into him from over the
scorpion's head and immediately he was dead.
After it had killed the beetle the scorpion stood motionless for nearly five minutes. During this time it identified the nature of its
prey and again tested the ground and the air for hostile vibrations. Reassured, its fighting claw withdrew from the half-severed beetle
and its two small feeding pincers reached out and into the beetle's flesh. Then for an hour, and with extreme fastidiousness, the scor-
pion ate its victim.
The great thorn bush under which the scorpion killed the beetle was quite a landmark in the wide expanse of rolling veld some
forty miles south of Kissidougou in the south-western corner of French Guinea. On all horizons there were hills and jungle, but here,
over twenty square miles, there was flat rocky ground which was almost desert and amongst the tropical scrub only this one thorn
bush, perhaps because there was water deep beneath its roots, had grown to the height of a house and could be picked out from many
miles away.
The bush grew more or less at the junction of three African states. It was in French Guinea but only about ten miles north of the
northernmost tip of Liberia and five miles east of the frontier of Sierra Leone. Across this frontier are the great diamond mines
around Sefadu. These are the property of Sierra International, which is part of the powerful mining empire of Afric International,
which in turn is a rich capital asset of the British Commonwealth.
An hour earlier in its hole among the roots of the great thorn bush the scorpion had been alerted by two sets of vibrations. First
there had been the tiny scraping of the beetle's movements, and these belonged to the vibrations which the scorpion immediately
recognized and diagnosed. Then there had been a series of incomprehensible thuds round the bush followed by a final heavy quake
which had caved in part of the scorpion's hole. These were followed by a soft rhythmic trembling of the ground which was so regular
that it soon became a background vibration of no urgency. After a pause the tiny scraping of the beetle had continued, and it was
greed for the beetle that, after a day of sheltering from its deadliest enemy, the sun, finally got the upper hand against the scorpion's
memory of the other noises and impelled it out of its lair into the filtering moonlight.
And now, as it slowly sucked the morsels of beetle-flesh off its feeding pincers, the signal for the scorpion's own death sounded
from far away on the eastern horizon, audible to a human, but made up of vibrations which were far outside the range of the scor-
pion's sensory system.
And, a few feet away, a heavy, blunt hand, with bitten finger nails, softly raised a jagged piece of rock.
There was no noise, but the scorpion felt a tiny movement in the air above it. At once its fighting claws were up and groping and
its sting was erect in the rigid tail, its near-sighted eyes staring up for a sight of the enemy.
The heavy stone came down.
"Black bastard."
The man watched as the broken insect whipped in its death agony.
The man yawned. He got to his knees in the sandy depression against the trunk of the bush where he had been sitting for nearly
two hours and, his arms bent protectingly over his head, scrambled out into the open.
The noise of the engine which the man had been waiting for, and which had signed the scorpion's death warrant, was louder. As
the man stood and stared up the path of the moon, he could just see a clumsy black shape coming fast towards him out of the east
and for a moment the moonlight glinted on whirling rotor blades.
The man rubbed his hands down the sides of his dirty khaki shorts and moved quickly round the bush to where the rear wheel of a
battered motor-cycle protruded from its hiding place. Below the pillion, on either side, there were leather toolboxes. From one of
these he extracted a small heavy package which he stowed inside his open shirt against the skin. From the other he took four cheap
electric torches and went off with them to where, fifty yards from the big thorn bush, there was a clear patch of flat ground about the
size of a tennis court. At three corners of the landing ground he screwed the butt end of a torch into the ground and switched it on.
Then, the last torch alight in his hand, he took up his position at the fourth corner and waited.
The helicopter was moving slowly towards him, not more than a hundred feet from the ground, the big rotor blades idling. It
looked like a huge, badly-constructed insect. To the man on the ground it seemed, as usual, to be making too much noise.
The helicopter paused, pitching slightly, directly over his Jiead. An arm came out of the cockpit and a torch flashed at him. It
flashed dot-dash, the morse for A.
The man on the ground flashed back a B and a C. He stuck the fourth torch into the ground and moved away, shielding his eyes
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against the coming whirl of dust. Above him the pitch of the rotor blades flattened imperceptibly and the helicopter settled
smoothly into the space between the four torches. The clatter of the engine stopped with a final cough, the tail rotor spun briefly in
neutral, and the main rotor blades completed a few awkward revolutions and then drooped to a halt.
In the echoing silence, a cricket started to zing in the thorn bush, and somewhere near at hand there was the anxious chirrup of a
nightbird.
After a pause to let the dust settle, the pilot banged open the door of the cockpit, pushed out a small aluminium ladder and climbed
stiffly to the ground. He waited beside his machine while the other man walked round the four corners of the landing ground picking
up and dowsing the torches. The pilot was half an hour late at the rendezvous and he was bored at the prospect of listening to the
other man's inevitable complaint. He despised all Afrikaners. This one in particular. To a Reichs-deutscher -and to a Luftwaffe pilot
who had fought under Galland in defence of the Reich they were a bastard race, sly, stupid and ill-bred. Of course this brute had a
tricky job, but it was nothing to navigating a helicopter five hundred miles over the jungle in the middle of the night, and then taking
it back again.
As the other man came up, the pilot half raised his hand in greeting. "Everything all right?"
"I hope so. But you're late again. I shall only just make it through the frontier by first light."
"Magneto trouble. We all have our worries. Thank God there are only thirteen full moons a year. Well, if you've got the stuff let's
have it and we'll tank her up and I'll be off.',.'
Without speaking, the man from the diamond mines reached into his shirt and handed over the neat, heavy packet.
The pilot took it. It was damp with the sweat from the smuggler's ribs. The pilot dropped it into a side pocket of his trim bush
shirt. He put his hand behind him, and wiped his fingers on the seat of his shorts.
"Good," he said. He turned towards his machine.
"Just a moment," said the diamond smuggler. There was a sullen note in his voice.
The pilot turned back and faced him. He thought: it's the voice of a servant who has screwed himself up to complain about his
food. "Ja. What is it?"
"Things are getting too hot. At the mines. I don't like it at all. There's been a big intelligence man down from London. You've read
about him. This man Sillitoe. They say he's been hired by the Diamond Corporation. There've been a lot of new regulations and all
punishments have been doubled. It's frightened out some of my smaller men. I had to be ruthless and, well, one of them somehow
fell into the crusher. That tightened things up a bit. But I've had to pay more. An extra ten per cent. And they're still not satisfied.
One of these days those security people are going to get one of my middlemen. And you know these black swine. They can't stand a
real beating." He looked swiftly into the pilot's eyes and then away again. "For the matter of that I doubt if anyone could stand the
sjambok. Not even me."
"So?" said the pilot. He paused. "Do you want me to pass this threat back to ABC?"
"I'm not threatening anyone," said the other man hastily. "I just want them to know that it's getting tough. They must know it
themselves. They must know about this man Sillitoe. And look what the Chairman said in our annual report. He said that our mines
were losing more than two million pounds a year through smuggling and IDE and that it was up to the government to stop it. And
what does that mean? It means 'stop me'!"
"And me," said the pilot mildly. "So what do you want? More money?"
"Yes," said the other man stubbornly. "I want a bigger cut. Twenty per cent more or I'll have to quit." He tried to read some sym-
pathy in the pilot's face.
"All right," said the pilot indifferently. "I'll pass the message on to Dakar, and if they're interested I expect they'll send it on to
London. But it's nothing to do with me, and if I were you." the pilot unbent for the first time, "I wouldn't put too much pressure on
these people. They can be much tougher than this Sillitoe, or the Company, or any government I've ever heard of. On just this end of
the pipeline, three men have died in the last twelve months. One for being yellow. Two for stealing from the packet. And you know
it. That was a nasty accident your predecessor had, wasn't it? Funny place to keep gelignite. Under his bed. Unlike him. He was al-
ways so careful about everything."
For a moment they stood and looked at each other in the moonlight. The diamond smuggler shrugged his shoulders. "All right," he
said. "Just tell them I'm hard up and need more money to pass down the line. They'll understand that, and if they've got any sense
they'll add another ten per cent on for me. If not…" He left the sentence unfinished and moved towards the helicopter. "Come on. I'll
give you a hand with the gas."
Ten minutes later the pilot climbed up into the cockpit and pulled the ladder in after him. Before he shut the door he raised a hand.
"So long," he said. "See you in a month."
The man on the ground suddenly felt lonely. "Totsiens," he said with a wave of the hand that was almost the wave of a lover.
"Alles van die beste." He stood back and held a hand up to his eyes against the dust.
The pilot settled into his seat and fastened the seat-belt, feeling for the rudder pedals with his feet. He made sure that the wheel
brakes were on, pushed the pitch control lever right down, turned on the fuel and pressed the starter. Satisfied with the beat of the
engine, he released the rotor brake and softly twisted the throttle on the pitch control. Outside the cabin windows the long rotor
blades slowly swung by and the pilot glanced astern at the whirring tail rotor. He settled himself back and watched the rotor speed
indicator creep up to 200 revolutions a minute. When the needle was just over the 200, he released the wheel brakes and pulled up
slowly and firmly on the pitch lever. Above him the blades of the rotor tilted and bit deeper into the air. More throttle, and the ma-
chine slowly rose clattering towards the sky until, at about 100 feet, the pilot simultaneously gave it left rudder and pushed forward
the joystick between his knees.
The helicopter swung towards the east and, gathering height and speed, roared away back up the path of the moon.
The man on the ground watched it go, and with it the £100,000 worth of diamonds his men had filched from the diggings during
the past month and had casually held out on their pink tongues as he stood beside the dentist's chair and brusquely inquired where it
hurt.
Still talking about their teeth, he would pick the stones out of their mouths and hold them up to the dentist's spotlight, and then
softly he would say 50, 75, 100; and they always nodded and took the notes and hid them in their clothes and went out of the surgery
with a couple of aspirins in a twist of paper as an alibi. They had to accept his price. There was no hope of a native getting diamonds
out. When the miners did get out, perhaps once a year to visit their tribe or to bury a relative, there was a whole routine of X-rays
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and castor oil to be gone through, and a grim future if they were caught. It was so easy to go to the dental surgery and pick the day
when 'Him' was on duty. And paper-money didn't show up on X-rays.
The man wheeled his motor-cycle over the rough ground on to the narrow trail and started off towards the frontier hills of Sierra
Leone. They were more distinct now. He would only just have time to get to Susie's hut before dawn. He grimaced at the thought of
having to make love to her at the end of an exhausting night. But it would have to be done. Money was not enough to pay for the
alibi she gave him. It was his white body she wanted. And then another ten miles to the club for breakfast and the coarse jokes of his
friends.
"Do a nice bit of inlay, Doc?"
"I hear she has the best set of frontals in the Province."
"Say Doc, what is it the full moon does to you?"
But each £100,000 worth meant £1000 for him in a London safe deposit. Nice crisp fivers. It was worth it. By God it was. But not
for much longer. No sir! At £2o,ooo he would definitely quit. And then…?
His mind full of lush dreams, the man on the motor-cycle bumped his way as fast as he could across the plain—away from the
great thorn bush where the pipeline for the richest smuggling operation in the world started its devious route to where it would fi-
nally gush out on to soft bosoms, five thousand miles away.
2
GEM QUALITY
"Don't push it in. Screw it in," said M impatiently.
James Bond, making a mental note to pass M's dictum on to the Chief of Staff, again picked up the jeweller's glass from the desk
where it had fallen and this time managed to fix it securely into the socket of his right eye.
Although it was late July and the room was bright with sunshine, M had switched on his desk light and tilted it so that it shone
straight at Bond. Bond picked the brilliant-cut stone up and held it to the light. As he turned it between his fingers, all the colours of
the rainbow flashed back at him from its mesh of facets until his eye was tired with the dazzle.
He took out the jeweller's glass and tried to think of something appropriate to say.
M looked at him quizzically. "Fine stone?"
"Wonderful," said Bond. "It must be worth a lot of money."
"A few pounds for the cutting," said M dryly. "It's a bit of quartz. Now then, let's try again." He consulted a list on the desk in
front of him and selected a fold of tissue paper, verified the number written on it, unfolded it and pushed it across to Bond.
Bond put the piece of quartz back into its own wrapping and picked up the second sample.
"It's easy for you, Sir," he smiled at M. "You've got the crib." He screwed the glass back into his eye and held the stone, if it was a
stone, up to the light.
This time, he thought, there could be no doubt about it. This stone also had the thirty-two facets above and the twenty-four below
of the brilliant-cut, and it was also about twenty carats, but what he now held had a heart of blue-white flame, and the infinite col-
ours reflected and refracted from its depths lanced into his eye like needles. With his left hand he picked up the quartz dummy and
held it beside the diamond in front of his glass. It was a lifeless chunk of matter, almost opaque beside the dazzling translucence of
the diamond, and the rainbow colours he had seen a few minutes before were now coarse and muddy.
Bond put down the piece of quartz and gazed again into the heart of the diamond. Now he could understand the passion that dia-
monds had inspired through the centuries, the almost sexual love they aroused among those who handled them and cut them and
traded in them. It was domination by a beauty so pure that it held a kind of truth, a divine authority before which all other material
things turned, like the bit of quartz, to clay. In these few minutes Bond understood the myth of diamonds, and he knew that he would
never forget what he had suddenly seen inside the heart of this stone..
He put the diamond down on its slip of paper and dropped the jeweller's glass into the palm of his hand. He looked across into M's
watchful eyes. "Yes," he said. "I see."
M sat back in his chair. "That's what Jacoby meant when I had lunch with him the other day at the Diamond Corporation," he said.
"He said that if I was going to get involved in the diamond business I ought to try and understand what was really at the bottom of it
all. Not just the millions of money involved, or the value of diamonds as a hedge against inflation, or the sentimental fashions in
diamonds for engagement rings and so forth. He said one must understand the passion for diamonds. So he just showed me what I'm
showing you. And," M smiled thinly at Bond, "if it will give you any satisfaction, I was just as taken in by that bit of quartz as you
were."
Bond sat still and said nothing.
"And now let's run through the rest," said M. He gestured towards the pile of paper packets in front of him. "I said I'd like to bor-
row some samples. They didn't seem to mind. Sent this lot round to my house this morning." M consulted his list, opened a packet
and pushed it across to Bond. "What you were looking at just now was the best—a 'Fine Blue-white'." He gestured towards the big
diamond in front of Bond. "Now this is a 'Top Crystal', ten carats, baguette-cut. Very fine stone, but worth about half a 'Blue-white'.
You'll see there's the faintest trace of yellow in it. The 'Cape' I'm going to show you next has a slight brownish tinge, according to
Jacoby, but I'm damned if I can see it. I doubt if anyone can except the experts."
Bond obediently picked up the Top Crystal' and for the next quarter, of an hour M led him through the whole range of diamonds
down to a wonderful series of coloured stones, ruby red, blue, pink, yellow, green and violet. Finally, M pushed over a packet of
smaller stones, all flawed or marked or of poor colour. "Industrial diamonds. Not what they call 'gem quality'. Used in machine tools
and so forth. But don't despise them. America bought £5,000,000 worth of them last year, and that's only one of the markets. Bron-
steen told me it was stones like these that were used for cutting the St Gothard tunnel. At the other end of the scale, dentists use them
for drilling your teeth. They're the hardest substance in the world. Last forever."
M pulled out his pipe and started to fill it. "And now you know as much about diamonds as I do."
Bond sat back in his chair and gazed vaguely at the bits of tissue paper and glittering stones that lay scattered across the red leather
surface of M's desk. He wondered what it was all about.
There was the rasp of a match against a box and Bond watched M tamp the burning tobacco down in the bowl of his pipe and then
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put the matchbox back in his pocket and tilt his chair in M's favourite attitude for reflection.
Bond glanced down at his watch. It was 11.30. Bond thought with pleasure of the in-tray piled with Top Secret dockets he had
gladly abandoned when the red telephone had summoned him an hour before. He felt fairly confident that now he wouldn't have to
deal with them. "I guess it's a job," the Chief of Staff had said in answer to Bond's inquiry. "The Chief says he won't take any more
calls before lunch and he's made an appointment for you at the Yard for two o'clock. Step on it." And Bond had reached for his coat
and had gone into the outer office where he was pleased to see his secretary registering in another bulky file with a Most Immediate
tab.
"M," said Bond as she looked up. "And Bill says it looks like a job. So don't think you're going to have the pleasure of shovelling
that lot into my in-tray. You can post it off to the Daily Express for all I care." He grinned at her. "Isn't that chap Sefton Delmer a
boy friend of yours, Lil? Just the stuff for him, I expect."
She looked at him appraisingly. "Your tie's crooked," she said coldly. "And anyway I hardly know him." She bent over her regis-
try and Bond went out and along the corridor and thought how lucky he was to have a beautiful secretary.
There was a creak from M's chair and Bond looked across the table at the man who held a great deal of his affection and all his
loyalty and obedience.
The grey eyes looked back at him thoughtfully. M took the pipe out of his mouth. "How long have you been back from that holi-
day in France?"
"Two weeks, Sir."
"Have a good time?"
"Not bad, Sir. Got a bit bored towards the end."
M made no comment. "I've been looking at your record sheet. Small-arms marks seem to be keeping well up in the top bracket.
Unarmed combat's satisfactory and your last medical shows you're in pretty good shape." M paused. "The point is," he went on un-
emotionally, "I've got rather a tough assignment for you. Wanted to make sure you'd be able to take care of yourself."
"Of course, Sir." Bond was slightly nettled.
"Don't make any mistake about this job, 007," said M sharply. "When I say it may be tough, I'm not being melodramatic. There
are plenty of tricky people you haven't met yet, and there may be some of them mixed up in this business. And some of the most
efficient. So don't be tetchy when I think twice before getting you involved in it."
"Sorry, Sir."
"All right then," M put his pipe down and leant forward with his arms crossed on the desk. "I'll tell you the story and then you can
decide whether you want to take it on."
"A week ago," said M, "one of the high-ups in the Treasury came to see me. Brought with him the Permanent Secretary to the
Board of Trade. It had to do with diamonds. Seems that most of what they call 'gem' diamonds in the world are mined on British
territory and that ninety per cent of all diamond sales are carried out in London. By the Diamond Corporation." M shrugged his
shoulders. "Don't ask me why. The British got hold of the business at the beginning of the century and we've managed to hang on to
it. Now it's a huge trade. Fifty million pounds a year. The biggest dollar-earner we've got. So when something goes wrong with it,
the Government gets worried. And that's what's happened." M looked mildly across at Bond. "At least two million pounds worth of
diamonds are being smuggled out of Africa every year."
"That's a lot of money," said Bond. "Where are they going to?"
"They say America," said M. "And I agree with them. It's by far the biggest diamond market. And those gangs of theirs are the
only people who could run an operation on this scale."
"Why don't the mining companies stop it?"
"They've done everything they can," said M. "You probably saw in the papers that De Beers took on our friend Sillitoe when he
left MI5, and he's out there now, working in with the South African security people. I gather he's put in a pretty drastic report and
come up with plenty of bright ideas for tightening things up, but the Treasury and the Board of Trade aren't very impressed. They
think the thing's too big to be handled by a lot of separate mining companies, however efficient they are. And they've got one very
good reason for wanting to take official action on their own."
"What's that, Sir?"
"There's a big packet of smuggled stones in London at this very moment," said M, and his eyes glittered across the desk at Bond.
"Waiting to go to America. And the Special Branch know who the carrier is to be. And they know who's to go out with him to keep
an eye on him. As soon as Ronnie Vallance came across the story—it was leaked to one of his narks in Soho, to one of his 'Ghost
Squad' as he chooses to call it—he went straight off to the Treasury. The Treasury talked to the Board of Trade and then both their
Ministers formed up to the PM. And the PM gave them authority to use the Service."
"Why not let the Special Branch of MI5 handle it, Sir?" asked Bond, reflecting that M seemed to be going through a bad phase of
mixing in other people's business.
"Of course they could arrest the carriers as soon as they took delivery and tried to get out of the country," said M impatiently. "But
that won't stop the traffic. These people aren't the sort thai talk. Anyway the carriers are only small fry. They probably just get the
stuff from a man in a park and hand it over to another man in a park when they get to the other side. The only way to get to the bot-
tom of the business is to follow the pipeline to America and see where it goes to there. And the FBI won't be much help to us, I'm
afraid. It's a very small part of their battle with the big-time gangs. And it's not doing any harm to the United States. Rather the re-
verse if anything. It's only England that's the loser. And America is outside the jurisdiction of the police and MI5. Only the Service
can handle the job."
"Yes, I see that," said Bond. "But have we got anything else to go on?"
"Ever heard of 'The House of Diamonds'?"
"Yes, of course, Sir," said Bond. "The big American jewellers. On West 46th Street in New York and the Rue de Rivoli in Paris. I
gather they rank almost as high as Cartier and Van Cleef and Boucheron nowadays. They've come up very quickly since the war."
"Yes," said M. "Those are the people. They've got a small place in London, too. Hatton Garden. Used to be very big buyers at the
monthly showings of the Diamond Corporation. But for the last three years they've bought less and less. Although, as you say, they
seem to be selling more and more jewellery every year. Must be getting their diamonds from somewhere. It was the Treasury who
brought their name up at our meeting the other day. But I can't find out anything against them. They've got one of their biggest men
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in charge over here. Seems odd as they do so little business. Man called Rufus B. Saye. Nothing much known about him. Lunches
every day at the American Club in Piccadilly. Plays golf at Sunningdale. Doesn't drink or smoke. Lives at the Savoy. Model citizen."
M shrugged his shoulders. "But the diamond business is a nice, well-regulated sort of family affair, and there's an impression that the
House of Diamonds has an awkward look about it. Nothing more than that."
Bond decided it was time to put the sixty-four thousand dollar question. "And where do I come in, Sir?" he asked, looking across
the desk into M's eyes.
"You've got an appointment with Vallance at the Yard in"—M looked at his watch—"just over an hour. He's going to start you
off. They're going to pull in this carrier tonight and put you into the pipeline instead of him."
Bond's fingers curled softly round the arms of his chair.
"And then?"
"And then," said M matter-of-factly, "you're going to smuggle those diamonds into America, At least that's the idea. What do you
think of it?"
3
HOT ICE
JAMES BOND shut the door of M's office behind him. He smiled into the warm brown eyes of Miss Moneypenny and walked
across her office into the Chief of Staff's room.
The Chief of Staff, a lean relaxed man of about Bond's age, put down his pen and sat back in his chair. He watched as Bond auto-
matically reached for the flat gun-metal cigarette case in his hip pocket and walked over to the open window and looked down on to
Regent's Park.
There was a thoughtful deliberation in Bond's movements that answered the Chief of Staff's question.
"So you've bought it."
Bond turned round. "Yes," he said. He lit a cigarette. Through the smoke, his eyes looked very directly at the Chief of Staff. "But
just tell me this, Bill. Why's the old man got cold feet about this job? He's even looked up the results of my last medical. What's he
so worried about? It's not as if this was Iron Curtain business. America's a civilized country. More or less. What's eating him?"
It was the Chief of Staffs duty to know most of what went on in M's mind. His own cigarette had gone out and he lit it and threw
the spent match over his left shoulder. He looked round to see whether it had fallen in the wastepaper basket. It had. He smiled up at
Bond. "Constant practice," he said. Then : "There aren't many things that worry M, James, and you know that as well as anybody in
the Service. SMERSH, of course. The German cypher-breakers. The Chinese opium ring—or at any rate the power they have all
over the world. The authority of the Mafia. And, and he's got a damned healthy respect for them, the American gangs. The big ones.
That's all. Those are the only people that get him worried. And this diamond business looks as if it's pretty certain to bring you up
against the gangs. They're the last people he expected us to get mixed up with. He's got quite enough on his plate without them.
That's all. That's what's giving him cold feet about this job."
"There's nothing so extraordinary about American gangsters," protested Bond. "They're not Americans. Mostly a lot of Italian
bums with monogrammed shirts who spend the day eating spaghetti and meatballs and squirting scent over themselves."
"That's what you think," said the Chief of Staff. "But the point is that those are only the ones you see. There are better ones behind
them, and still better ones behind those. Look at narcotics. Ten million addicts. Where do they get the stuff from? Look at gam-
bling—legitimate gambling. Two hundred and fifty million dollars a year is the take at Las Vegas. Then there are the undercover
games at Miami and Chicago and so on. All owned by the gangs and their friends. A few years ago, Buggsy Siegel got the back of
his head blown off because he wanted too much of the take from the Las Vegas operation. And he was tough enough. These are big
operations. Do you realize gambling's the biggest single industry in America? Bigger than steel. Bigger than motor cars? And they
take damned good care to keep it running smoothly. Get hold of a copy of the Kefauver Report if you don't believe me. And now
these diamonds. Six million dollars a year is good money, and you can bet your life it'll be well protected." The Chief of Staff
paused. He looked impatiently up at the tall figure in the dark blue single-breasted suit and into the obstinate eyes in the lean, brown
face. "Perhaps you haven't read the FBI Report on American Crime for this year. Interesting. Just thirty-four murders every day.
Nearly 150,000 Americans criminally killed in the last twenty years." Bond looked incredulous. "It's a fact, damn you. Get hold of
these Reports and see for yourself. And that's why M wanted to make sure you were fit before he put you into the pipeline. You're
going to take those gangs on. And you'll be by yourself. Satisfied:1"
Bond's face relaxed. "Come on, Bill," he said. "If that's all there is to it, I'll buy you lunch. It's my turn and I feel like celebrating.
No more paperwork this summer. I'll take you to Scotts' and we'll have some of their dressed crab and a pint of black velvet. You've
taken a load off my mind. I thought there might be some ghastly snag about this job."
"All right, blast you." The Chief of Staff put aside the misgivings which he fully shared with his Chief, and followed Bond out of
the office and slammed the door with unnecessary force behind him.
Later, punctually at two o'clock, Bond was shaking hands with the dapper, level-eyed man in the old-fashioned office which hears
more secrets than any other room in Scotland Yard.
Bond had made friends with Assistant Commissioner Vallance over the Moonraker affair and there was no need to waste time on
preliminaries.
Vallance pushed a couple of CID identification photographs across the desk. They showed a dark-haired, rather good-looking
young man with a clean-cut, swashbuckling face in which the eyes smiled innocently.
"That's the chap," said Vallance. "Near enough like you to pass with someone who's only got his description. Peter Franks. Nice-
looking fellow. Good family. Public school and all that. Then he went wrong and stayed wrong. Country house burglaries are his
line. May have been on the Duke of Windsor job at Sunningdale a few years ago. We've pulled him in once or twice, but we could
never get anything to stick. Now he's slipped up. They often do when they get into a racket they know nothing about. I've got two or
three undercover girls in Soho and he's keen on one of them. Funnily enough, she's rather keen on him. Thinks she can make him go
straight and all that sort of stuff. But she's got her job to do, and when he told her about this job, just casually, as if it was the hell of
a lark, she passed the word back here."
Bond nodded. "Specialist crooks never take other people's lines seriously. I bet he wouldn't have talked to her about one of his
6
country house jobs."
"Not on your life," agreed Vallance. "Or we'd have had him inside years ago. Anyway, it seems he was contacted by a friend of a
friend and agreed to do a smuggling job to America for $5000. Payable on delivery. My girl asked him if it was drugs. And he
laughed and said 'no—better still, Hot Ice'. Had he got the diamonds? No. His next job was to contact his 'guard'. Tomorrow evening
at the Trafalgar Palace. Five o'clock in her room. A girl called Case. She would tell him what to do and go over with him." Vallance
got up and paced to and fro in front of the framed forgeries of five pound notes that lined the wall opposite the windows. "These
smugglers generally go in pairs when big stuff is being moved. The carrier is never quite trusted, and the men at the other end like to
have a witness in case anything goes wrong at the customs. Then the big men don't get caught napping if the carrier talks."
Big stuff being moved. Carriers. Customs. Guards. Bond killed his cigarette in the ash-tray on Vallance's desk. How often, in his
early days in his own Service, had he been part of this same routine—through Strasbourg into Germany, through Niegoreloye into
Russia, over the Simplon, across the Pyrenees. The tension. The dry mouth. The nails ground into the palms of the hands. And now,
having graduated away from all that, here he was going through with it again.
"Yes, I see," said Bond, dodging his memories. "But what's the general picture? Got any ideas? What sort of an operation was
Franks going to fit in to?"
"Well, the diamonds certainly come from Africa." Vallance's eyes were opaque. "Probably not the Union mines. More likely the
big leak out of Sierra Leone our friend Sillitoe's been looking for. Then the stones may get out through Liberia, or more likely
French Guinea. Then perhaps into France. And since this packet's turned up in London, presumably London's part of the pipeline
too."
Vallance stopped his pacing and faced Bond. "And now we know that this packet is on its way to America, and what happens to it
there is anybody's guess. The operators wouldn't try and save money on the cutting—that's where half the price of a diamond goes—
so it looks as if the stones get funnelled into some legitimate diamond business and then get cut and marketed like any other stones."
Vallance paused. "You won't mind if I give you a bit of advice?"
"Don't be ridiculous."
"Well," said Vallance, "in all these jobs the pay-off to subordinates is generally the weakest link. How was this $5000 to be paid to
Peter Franks? Who by? And if he did the job successfully, would he be taken on again? If I was in your shoes I'd watch these points.
Concentrate on getting through the cutout who does the paying off and try to get on farther up the pipeline towards the big men. If
they like the look of you it shouldn't be difficult. Good carriers aren't easy to come by, and even the top men are going to be inter-
ested in the new recruit.'"
"Yes," said Bond thoughtfully, "that makes sense. The main trouble will be to get past the first contact in America. Let's hope the
whole job doesn't blow up in my face in the customs shed at Idlewild. I shall look pretty silly if the Inspectoscope picks me up. But I
expect this Case woman will have some bright ideas about actually carrying the stuff. And now what's the first step? How are you
going to substitute me for Peter Franks?"
Vallance started pacing to and fro again. "I think that ought to be all right," he said. "We're going to take in Franks this evening
and hold him for conspiring to evade the customs." He smiled briefly. "It'll break up a beautiful friendship with my girl I'm afraid.
But that's got to be faced. And then the idea is for you to make the rendezvous with Miss Case."
"Does she know anything about Franks?"
"Just his description and his name," said Vallance. "At least that's what we guess. I doubt if she even knows the man who con-
tacted him. Cut-outs all along the line. Everybody does one job in a watertight compartment. Then, if there's a hole in the sock, it
doesn't run."
"Know anything about the woman?"
"Passport details. American citizen. 27. Born San Francisco. Blonde. Blue eyes. Height 5 ft 6 in. Profession: single woman. Been
over here a dozen times in the last three years. May have been more often under a different name. Always stays at the Trafalgar Pal-
ace. The hotel detective says she doesn't seem to go out much. Few visitors. Never stays more than two weeks. Never gives any
trouble. That's all. Don't forget that when you meet her you'll have to have a good story yourself. Why you're doing the job and so
on."
"I'll see to that."
"Anything else we can help over?"
Bond reflected. The rest seemed to be up to him. Once he had got into the pipe it would just be a question of improvising. Then he
remembered the jewellery firm. "What about this House of Diamonds lead the Treasury dreamed up? Seems a long shot. Any
views?"
"Quite honestly I hadn't bothered with them." There was apology in Vallance's voice. "I checked on this man Saye, but again it's a
blank except for his passport details. American. 45. Diamond merchant. And so on. He goes to Paris a lot. Been going once a month
for the last three years as a matter of fact. Probably got a girl there. Tell you what. Why not go along and have a look at the place
and at him? You never can tell."
"How would I set about that?" asked Bond dubiously.
Vallance didn't answer. Instead he pressed a switch on the big intercom on his desk.
"Yes, Sir?" said a metallic voice.
"Send up Dankwaerts at the double, please Sergeant. And Lobiniere. And then get me the House of Diamonds on the telephone.
Gem merchants in Hatton Garden. Ask for Mr Saye."
Vallance went and looked out of the window at the river. He took a cigarette lighter out of his waistcoat pocket and flicked at it
absent-mindedly. There was a knock on the door and Val-lance's staff secretary put his head in. "Sergeant Dankwaerts, Sir."
"Send him in," said Vallance. "Hold Lobiniere until I ring."
The secretary held open the door and a nondescript man in plain-clothes came in. His hair was thinning, he wore spectacles and
his complexion was pale. His expression was kindly and studious. He might have been any senior clerk in any business.
"Afternoon, Sergeant," said Vallance. "This is Commander Bond of the Ministry of Defence." The Sergeant smiled politely. "I
want you to take Commander Bond to the House of Diamonds in Hatton Garden. He will be 'Sergeant fames' of your staff. You
think the diamonds from that Ascot job are on their way out to the Argentine through America. You will say so to Mr Saye, the top
man there. You will wonder if it is possible that Mr Saye has heard any talk from the other side. His New York office may have
7
heard something. You know, all very nice and polite. But just look him in the eye. Put as much pressure on as you can without giv-
ing any grounds for complaint. Then apologize and leave and forget all about it. All right? Any questions?"
"No, Sir," said Sergeant Dankwaerts stolidly.
Vallance spoke into the intercom and a moment later there appeared a sallow, rather ingratiating man wearing extremely smart
plain-clothes and carrying a small attache case. He stood waiting just inside the door.
"Good afternoon, Sergeant. Come and have a look at this friend of mine."
The Sergeant came and stood close up to Bond and politely turned him towards the light. Two very keen dark eyes examined his
face minutely for a full minute. Then the man stepped away.
"Can't guarantee the scar for more than six hours, Sir," he said. "Not in this heat. But the rest's all right. Who is he to be, Sir?"
"He's to be Sergeant James, a member of Sergeant Dank waert's staff." Vallance looked at his watch. "Only for three hours. All
right?"
"Certainly, Sir. Shall I go ahead?" At Vallance's nod, the policeman led Bond to a chair by the window, put his small attache case
on the floor beside the chair and knelt down on one knee and opened it. Then, for ten minutes, his light fingers busied themselves
over Bond's face and hair.
Bond resigned himself and listened to Vallance talking to the House of Diamonds. "Not until 3.30? In that case would you please
tell Mr Saye that two of my men will be calling on him at 3.30 sharp. Yes, I'm afraid it is rather important. Only a formality of
course. Routine inquiry. I don't expect it will take up more than ten minutes of Mr Saye's time. Thank you so much. Yes. Assistant
Commissioner Vallance. That's right. Scotland Yard. Yes. Thank you. Goodbye."
Vallance put back the receiver and turned towards Bond. "Secretary says Saye won't be back until 3.30. I suggest you get there at
3.15. Never does any harm to have a look round first. Always useful to get your man a bit off balance. How's it going?"
Sergeant Lobiniere held up a pocket mirror in front of Bond.
A touch of white at the temples. The scar gone. A hint of studiousness at the corners of the eyes and mouth. The faintest shadows
under the cheekbones. Nothing you could put your finger on, but it all added up to someone who certainly wasn't James Bond.
4
"WHAT GOES ON AROUND HERE?"
IN the patrol car Sergeant Dankwaerts was occupied with his thoughts, and they drove in silence along the Strand and up Chan-
cery Lane and into Holborn. At Gamages they turned left into Hatton Garden and the car drew up near the neat white portals of the
London Diamond Club. Bond followed his companion across the pavement to a smart door in (he centre of which was a well pol-
ished brass plate on which was engraved 'The House of Diamonds'. And underneath 'Rufus B. Saye. Vice-President for Europe'.
Sergeant Dankwaerts rang the bell and a smart Jewish girl opened the door and led them across a thickly carpeted entrance hall into
a panelled waiting-room.
"I am expecting Mr Saye any minute now," she said indifferently and went out and closed the door.
The waiting-room was luxurious and, thanks to an unseasonable log-fire in the Adam fireplace, tropically hot. In the centre of the
close-fitted dark red carpet there was a circular Sheraton rosewood table and six matching armchairs that Bond guessed were worth
at least a thousand pounds. On the table were the latest magazines and several copies of the Kimberley Diamond News. Dankwaerts's
eyes lit up when he saw these and he sat down and started to turn over the pages of the June issue.
On each of the four walls was a large flower painting in a golden frame. Something almost three dimensional about these paintings
caught Bond's attention and he walked over to examine one of them. It was not a painting, but a stylized arrangement of freshly cut
flowers set behind glass in niches lined with copper-coloured velvet. The others were the same, and the four Water-ford vases in
which the flowers stood were a perfect set.
The room was very quiet except for the hypnotic tick of a large sunburst wall-clock and the soft murmur of voices from behind a
door opposite the entrance. There was a click and the door opened a few inches and a voice with a thick foreign intonation expostu-
lated volubly: "Bud Mister Grunspan, why being so hard? Vee must all make a lifting, yes? I am telling you this vonderful stone gost
me ten tousant pounts. Ten tousant! You ton't pelieff me? Bud I svear it. On my vort of honour." There was a negative pause and the
voice made its final bid. "Bedder still! I bet you fife pounts!"
There was the sound of laughter. "Willy, you're a real card," said an American voice. "But it's no dice. Be glad to help you, but
that stone isn't worth more than nine thousand, and I'll give you a hundred on top of that for yourself. Now you go along and think
about it. You won't get a better offer in The Street."
The door opened and a stage American business man with pince-nez and a tightly buttoned mouth ushered out a small harassed-
looking Jew with a large red rose in his button-hole. They looked startled at finding the waiting-room occupied and, with a muttered
"Pardon me" to no one in particular, the American almost ran his companion across the room and out into the hall. The door closed
behind them.
Dankwaerts looked up at Bond and winked. "That's the whole of the diamond business in a nutshell," he said. "That was Willy
Behrens, one of the best-known freelance brokers in The Street. I suppose the other man was Saye's buyer." He turned again to his
paper, and Bond, resisting the impulse to light a cigarette, went back to his examination of the flower 'pictures'.
Suddenly the rich, carpeted, ticking silence of the room struck like a cuckoo clock. Simultaneously, a log fell in the grate, the sun-
burst clock on the wall chimed the half hour, the door was thrust open and a big, dark man took two quick steps in the room and
stood looking sharply from one to the other.
"My name is Saye," he said harshly. "What goes on around here? What do you want?"
The door was open behind him. Sergeant Dankwaerts rose to his feet and walked politely but firmly round the man and closed it.
Then he returned to the middle of the room.
"I am Sergeant Dankwaerts of the Special Branch of Scotland Yard," he said in a quiet, peaceful voice. "And this," he made a ges-
ture towards Bond, "is Sergeant James. I am making a routine inquiry about some stolen diamonds. It occurred to the Assistant
Commissioner," the voice was of velvet, "that you might be able to help us."
"Yes?" said Mr Saye. He looked contemptuously from one to the other of these two underpaid flatfeet who had the effrontery to be
taking up his time. "Go ahead."
8
While Sergeant Dankwaerts, in tones which to a law-breaker would have sounded menacingly level, and consulting from time to
time a small black note-book, recited a story studded with 'on the i6th instant's' and 'it came to our knowledge's', Bond made an un-
concealed examination of Mr Saye which appeared to perturb Mr Saye no more than the undertones of Sergeant Dankwaerts's recita-
tion.
Mr Saye was a large, compact man with the hardness of a chunk of quartz. He had a very square face whose sharp angles were ac-
centuated by short, wiry black hair, cut en brosse and without side-whiskers. His eyebrows were black and straight, and tucked in
below them there were two extremely sharp and steady black eyes. He was clean-shaven and his lips were a thin and rather wide
straight line. The square chin was deeply cleft and the muscles bulged at the points of the jaw. He was dressed in a roomy, black,
single-breasted suit, a white shirt and an almost bootlace-thin black tie, held in place by a gold tie-clip representing a spear. His long
arms hung relaxed at his sides and terminated in two very large hands, now slightly curled inwards, whose backs showed black hair.
His big feet, in expensive black shoes, looked to be about size 12.
Bond summed him up as a tough and capable man who had triumphed in a variety of hard schools and who looked as if he was
still serving in one of them.
"… and these are the stones we are particularly interested in," concluded Sergeant Dankwaerts. He referred to his black book.
"One 20 carat Wesselton. Two Fine Blue-whites of about 10 carats each. One 30 carat Yellow Premier. One 15 carat Top Cape and
two 15 carat Cape Unions." He paused. Then he looked up from his book and very sharply into Mr Saye's hard black eyes. "Have
any of those passed through your hands, Mr Saye, or through your firm in New York?" he inquired softly.
"No," said Mr Saye flatly. "They have not." He turned to the door behind him and opened it, "And now, good afternoon, gentle-
men."
Without bothering any further with them he walked decisively out of the room and they heard his footsteps go rapidly up a few
stairs. A door opened and banged shut and there was silence.
Undismayed, Sergeant Dankwaerts slipped his note-book into his waistcoat pocket, picked up his hat and walked out into the hall
and then out into the street. Bond followed him.
They climbed into the patrol car and Bond gave the address of his flat off the King's Road. When the car was moving, Sergeant
Dankwaerts relaxed his official face. He turned to Bond. He looked amused. "I quite enjoyed that," he said cheerfully. "Don't often
meet a nut as tough as that one. Did you get what you wanted, Sir?"
Bond shrugged his shoulders. "Tell the truth, Sergeant, I didn't know exactly what I did want. But I was glad to get a good look at
Mr Rufus B. Saye. Quite a chap. Doesn't look much like my idea of a diamond merchant."
Sergeant Dankwaerts chuckled. "He's not a diamond merchant, Sir," he said, "or I'll eat my hat."
"How do you know?"
"When I read out that list of missing stones," Sergeant Dankwaerts smiled happily, "I mentioned a Yellow Premier and two Cape
Unions."
"Yes?"
"It just happens that there aren't such things, Sir."
5
"FEUILLES MORTES"
BOND felt the liftman watching him as he walked down the long, quiet corridor to the end room, Room 350. Bond wasn't sur-
prised. He knew there was more petty crime in this hotel than in any other large hotel in London. Vallance had once shown him the
big monthly crime map of London. He had pointed to the forest of little flags round the Trafalgar Palace. "That place annoys the
map-room men," he had said. "Every month this corner gets so pitted with holes they have to paste fresh paper over it to hold the
next month's pins."
As Bond neared the end of the corridor he could hear a piano swinging a rather sad tune. At the door of 350 he knew the music
came from behind it. He recognized the tune. It was Feuilles Mortes. He knocked.
"Come in." The hall porter had telephoned and the voice was waiting for him.
Bond walked into the small living-room and closed the door behind him.
"Lock it," said the voice. It came from the bedroom.
Bond did as he was told and walked across the middle of the room until he was opposite the open bedroom door. As he passed the
portable long-player on the writing desk the pianist began on La Ronde.
She was sitting, half naked, astride a chair in front of the dressing-table, gazing across the back of the chair into the triple mirror.
Her bare arms were folded along the tall back of the chair and her chin was resting on her arms. Her spine was arched, and there was
arrogance in the set of her head and shoulders. The black string of her brassiere across the naked back, the tight black lace pants and
the splay of her legs whipped at Bond's senses.
The girl raised her eyes from looking at her face and inspected him in the mirror, briefly and coolly.
"I guess you're the new help," she said in a low, rather husky voice that made no commitment. "Take a seat and enjoy the music.
Best light record ever made."
Bond was amused. He obediently took the few steps to a deep armchair, moved it a little so that he could still see her through the
doorway, and sat down.
"Do you mind if I smoke?" he said, taking out his case and putting a cigarette in his mouth.
"If that's the way you want to die."
Miss Case resumed the silent contemplation of her face in the mirror while the pianist played J'attendrai. Then it was the end of
the record.
Indifferently she flexed her hips back off the chair and stood up. She half turned her head and the blonde hair that fell heavily to
the base of her neck curved with the movement and caught the light.
"If you like it, turn it over," she said carelessly. "Be with you in a moment." She moved out of sight.
Bond walked over to the gramophone and picked up the record. It was George Feyer with rhythm accompaniment. He looked at
the number and memorized it. It was Vox 500. He examined the other side and, skipping La Vie en Rose because it had memories
9
for him, put the needle down at the beginning of Avril an Portugal.
Before he left the gramophone he pulled the blotter softly from under it and held it up to the standard lamp beside the writing-
desk. He held it sideways under the light and glanced along it. It was unmarked. He shrugged his shoulders and slipped it back under
the machine and walked back to his chair.
He thought that the music was appropriate to the girl. All the tunes seemed to belong to her. No wonder it was her favourite re-
cord. It had her brazen sexiness, the rough tang of her manner and the poignancy that had been in her eyes as they had looked mood-
ily back at him out of the mirror.
Bond had had no picture in his mind of the Miss Case who was to shadow him to America. He had taken for granted that it would
be some tough, well-used slattern with dead eyes—a hard, sullen woman who had 'gone the route' and whose body was no longer of
any interest to the gang she worked for. This girl was tough all right, tough of manner, but whatever might be the history of her
body, the skin had shone with life under the light.
What was her first name? Bond got up again and walked over to the gramophone. There was a Pan-American Airways label at-
tached to the grip. It said Miss T. Case. T? Bond walked back to his chair. Teresa? Tess? Thelma? Trudy? Tilly? None of them
seemed to fit. Surely not Trixie, or Tony or Tommy.
He was still playing with the problem when she appeared quietly in the doorway to the bedroom and stood with one elbow resting
high up against the door-jamb and her head bent sideways on to her hand. She looked down at him reflectively.
Bond got unhurriedly to his feet and looked back at her.
She was dressed to go out except for her hat, a small black affair that swung from her free hand. She wore a smart black tailor-
made over a deep olive-green shirt buttoned at the neck, golden-tan nylons and black square-toed crocodile shoes that looked very
expensive. There was a slim gold wrist-watch on a black strap at one wrist and a heavy gold chain bracelet at the other. One large
baguette-cut diamond flared on the third finger of her right hand and a flat pearl ear-ring in twisted gold showed on her right ear
where the heavy pale gold hair fell away from it.
She was very beautiful in a devil-may-care way, as if she kept her looks for herself and didn't mind what men thought of them,
and there was an ironical tilt to the finely drawn eyebrows above the wide, level, rather scornful grey eyes that seemed to say,
"Sure. Come and try. But brother, you'd better be tops."
The eyes themselves had the rare quality of chatoyance. When jewels have chatoyance the colour in the lustre changes with
movement in the light, and the colour of this girl's eyes seemed to vary between a light grey and a deep grey-blue.
Her skin was lightly tanned and without make-up except for a deep red on the lips, which were full and soft and rather moody so
as to give the effect of what is called 'a sinful mouth'. But not, thought Bond, one that often sinned—if one was to judge by the level
eyes and the hint of authority and tension behind them.
The eyes now looked impersonally into his.
"So you're Peter Franks," she said and the voice was low and attractive, but with a touch of condescension.
"Yes," he said. "And I've been wondering what T stands for."
She thought for a moment. "I guess you can find out at the desk," she said. "It stands for Tiffany." She walked over to the gramo-
phone and stopped the record in the middle of ]e n'en connais pas la fin. She turned round. "But it's not in the public domain," she
added coldly.
Bond shrugged his shoulders and moved over to the window-sill and leant easily against it with his ankles crossed.
His nonchalance seemed to irritate her. She sat down in front of the writing-desk. "Now then," she said, and her voice had an edge
to it, "Let's get down to business. In the first place, why did you take on this job?"
"Somebody died."
"Oh." She looked at him sharply. "They told me your line was stealing." She paused. "Hot blood or cold blood?"
"Hot blood. A fight."
"So you want to get out?"
"That's about it. And the money."
She changed the subject. "Got a wooden leg? False teeth?"
"No. Everything's real."
She frowned. "I'm always telling them to find me a man with a wooden leg. Well, have you got any hobbies or anything? Any
ideas about where you're going to carry the stones?"
"No," said Bond. "I play cards and golf. But I thought the handles of trunks and suitcases were good places for this sort of stuff."
"So do the customs men," she said dryly. She sat silent for a moment, reflecting. Then she pulled a piece of paper and a pencil to-
wards her. "What sort of golf balls do you use?" she asked unsmilingly.
"They're called Dunlop 65'$." He was equally serious. "Maybe you've got something there."
She made no comment, but wrote the name down. She looked up. "Got a passport?"
"Well, I have," admitted Bond. "But it's in my real name."
"Oh." She was suspicious again. "And what might that be?"
"James Bond."
She snorted. "Why not choose Joe Doe?" She shrugged her shoulders. "Who cares anyway? Can you get an American visa in two
days? And a vaccination certificate?"
"Don't see why not," said Bond. (Q Branch would fix all that.) "There's nothing against me in America. Or at Criminal Records
here, for the matter of that. Under Bond, that is."
"Okay," she said. "Now listen. Immigration will need this. You're going over to the States to stay with a man called Tree. Michael
Tree. You'll be staying at the Astor in New York. He's an American friend of yours. You met him in the war." She unbent minutely.
"Just for the record, this man really exists. He'll back up your story. But he's not generally known as Michael. He's known as 'Shady'
Tree to his friends. If any," she added sourly.
Bond smiled.
"He's not as funny as he sounds," said the girl shortly. She opened a drawer in the desk and took out a packet of five-pound notes
with a rubber band round it. She riffled them through and detached about half their number and put these back in the drawer. She
rolled up the rest, snapped the rubber band round them and tossed the packet across the room to Bond. Bond leant forward and
10
caught it near the floor.
"There's about £500 in there," she said. "Book yourself in at the Ritz and give that address to Immigration. Get a good used suit-
case and put in it what you would take on a golfing holiday. Get your golf clubs. Keep out of sight. BOAC Monarch to New York.
Thursday evening. Get a single ticket first thing tomorrow morning. The Embassy won't give you a visa without seeing your ticket.
Car will pick you up at the Ritz at 6.30 Thursday evening. Driver will give you the golf balls. Put 'em in your bag. And," she looked
him straight in the eye, "don't think you can go into business for yourself with this stuff. The driver will stay alongside you until
your luggage has gone out to the plane. And I'll be at London Airport. So no funny business. Okay?"
Bond shrugged his shoulders. "What would I do with this kind of merchandise?" he said carelessly. "Too big for me. And what
happens the other end?"
"Another driver will be waiting outside the customs. He'll tell you what to do next. Now," her voice was urgent, "If anything hap-
pens at the customs, either end, you know nothing, see? You just don't know how the balls got into your bag. Whatever they ask you,
just go on saying, 'By me'. Act dumb. I shall be watching. And maybe others too. That I wouldn't know. If they lock you up in
America, ask for the British Consul and go on asking. You won't get any help from us. But that's what you're being paid for. Okay?"
"Fair enough," said Bond. "The only person I could get into trouble would be you." He looked appraisingly at her. "And I wouldn't
like that to happen."
"Shucks," she said scornfully. "You've got nothing on me. Don't worry about me, my friend. I can look after myself." She got up
and came and stood in front of him. "And don't 'little girl' me," she said sharply. "We're on a job. And I can take care of myself.
You'd be surprised."
Bond stood up and away from the window-sill. He smiled down and into the flashing grey eyes that were now dark with impa-
tience. " 'I can do anything better than you can.' Don't worry. I'll be a credit to you. But just relax and stop being so business-like for
a minute. I'd like to see you again. Could we meet in New York if everything goes all right?" Bond felt treacherous as he said the
words. He liked this girl. He wanted to make friends with her. But it would be a question of using ' friendship to get further up the
pipeline.
She looked thoughtfully at him for a moment and her eyes gradually lost their darkness. Her sharply compressed lips relaxed and
parted a little. There was a hint of a stammer in her voice as she answered him.
"I, I… that is," she brusquely turned away from him. "Hell," she said, but the word sounded artificial. "I've got nothing on Friday
night. Guess we might have dinner. '21' Club on 52nd. All the cab drivers know it. Eight o'clock. If the job goes off okay. Suit you?"
She turned back towards him and looked at his mouth and not his eyes.
"Fine," said Bond. He thought it was time to get out before he made a mistake. "Now," he said efficiently. "Is there anything
else?"
"No," she said, and then sharply, as if she had just remembered something. "What's the time?"
Bond looked at his watch. "Ten to six."
"I've got to get busy," she said. With a movement of dismissal she walked towards the door. Bond followed her. With her hand on
the key she turned. She looked at him, and there was confidence and almost warmth in her eyes. "You'll be all right," she said. "Just
keep away from me in the plane. Don't panic if anything goes wrong. If you work out okay," the patronizing note came back to her
voice, "I'll try and get you some more of the same sort of jobs."
"Thanks," said Bond. "I'd appreciate that. I'd enjoy working with you."
With a slight shrug of the shoulders, she opened the door and Bond walked out into the corridor.
He turned. "See you at this '21' place of yours," he said. He wanted to say more, to find an excuse to stay with her, with this lonely
girl who played the gramophone and gazed at herself in the mirror.
But now her expression was remote. He might have been a complete stranger. "Sure," she said indifferently. She looked at him
once more and then she closed the door slowly but firmly in his face.
As Bond walked away down the long corridor to the lift, the girl stood just inside the door and listened until his footsteps had van-
ished. Then, with brooding eyes, she walked slowly over to the gramophone and switched it on. She picked up the Feyer record and
searched for the groove she wanted. She put the record on the machine and found the place with the needle. The tune was ]e n'en
connais fas la fin. She stood listening to it and wondering about the man who had suddenly, out of the blue, found his way into her
life. God, she thought to herself with sudden angry despair, another dam crook. Couldn't she ever get away from them? But when the
record stopped her face was happy, and she hummed the tune as she powdered her nose and got ready to go out.
Out on the street she paused and looked at her watch. Ten minutes past six. Five minutes to go. She walked across Trafalgar
Square to Charing Cross Station, arranging in her mind what she was going to say. Then she went into the station and into one of the
call-boxes she always used.
It was just 6.15 when she dialled the Welbeck number. After the usual two rings she heard the click of the automatic recorder tak-
ing the call. For twenty seconds she heard nothing but the sharp hiss of a needle on wax. Then the neutral voice that was her un-
known master said the one word 'Speak'. And then there was silence again except for the hiss of the recorder.
She had long got over being flustered by the abrupt, disembodied command. She spoke rapidly but distinctly into the black
mouthpiece. "Case to ABC. I repeat. Case to ABC." She paused. "Carrier is satisfactory. Says real name is James Bond and will use
that name on passport. Plays golf and will carry golf clubs. Suggest golf balls. Uses Dunlop 60's. All other arrangements stand. Will
call for confirmation at 1915 and 2015. That's all."
She listened for a moment to the hiss of the recorder; then she put down the receiver and walked back to her hotel. She called
Room Service for a large dry Martini and when it came she sat and smoked and played the gramophone and waited for 7.15.
Then, or perhaps not until she called back again at 8.15, the neutral, muffled voice would come back at her over the telephone
wire: "ABC to Case. I repeat. ABC to Case…" And then would follow her instructions.
And somewhere, in some rented room in London, the hiss of the recorder would stop as she put back the receiver. And then, per-
haps, an unknown door would close and footsteps would softly sound on some stairs and out into an unknown street and away.
6
IN TRANSIT
摘要：

1ToJ.F.C.B.andE.L.C.andtothememoryofW.W.Jr.,atSaratoga.1954and1THEPIPELINEOPENSWITHitstwofightingclawsheldforwardlikeawrestler'sarmsthebigpandinusscorpionemergedwithadryrustlefromthefin-ger-sizedholeundertherock.Therewasasmallpatchofhard,flatearthoutsidetheholeandthescorpionstoodinthecentreofthisont...

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