by John Gardner
‘I told her there was no time like the present, and she handed in her notice. The management were not pleased, especially when she came to work for me the next day, all tarted up in good clothes – clothes that I had bought her.
‘Luigi sent someone in to do the car. There was a little switch, under the dash. All I had to do was flick it on and fifteen minutes later the whole thing would go up. It would take one telephone call to Luigi’s man and he’d be round at the back of the hotel to pick me up. It went like clockwork. She had a driving licence and I’d already checked her out in the car.
‘When I left you, James, I went straight back to the hotel and told her to meet me at the back entrance. I got the bell boys to put my luggage in the car. I’d changed my handbag and threw the one you’d already seen into the front passenger seat.
‘The rest was simple. I tipped magnificently, drove around the block and then shot up to the back of the hotel. Carlotta was waiting – that was her name, Carlotta. I told her to take the car over to the other hotel where you were waiting for me – no doubt expectantly, James.’
‘Go on.’
‘I activated the bomb as I got out and she drove off to her destiny. Luigi’s man was waiting for me and he drove me to National where I took a flight to New York under another name – with all the right papers and things, of course. But you know about stuff like that, don’t you, James? I spent time in Paris, in the South of France, all over the place. Having occasional meetings, of course, because the plans were well advanced by then.’ She gave a very nasty high-pitched laugh. ‘And now we’re on the verge of doing everything we planned. I think it would be a good idea if you took me up on my offer. Give me away tomorrow, James – I mean today, of course. Today’s my wedding day, can you believe it? Give me away and I’ll see to it that you both live until tomorrow@; margin-bottom: ad dle night, after you’ve heard all that’s going to happen next month.
‘We’re going to change the world, my dear. We’re going to do away with crime and the violence of the streets. We will own the United States and we’ll really see the American Dream. It’s all going to happen. Tough on crime – oh, very tough on crime, summary execution if you’re caught with dope on you; your thing cut off for rape; hands severed for theft and slow lingering deaths for murder. It’ll take a few months, but it’s what the people really want, isn’t it? Safety. The country working again, self-sufficient, making everything we need. Utterly isolationist. Eventually the world will come to heel because they won’t have a market in the good old US of A, will they?’
‘Who are you marrying, Sukie? Who’s going to be your husband?’
She did a little capering dance, giggling, her mind out of touch with reality. ‘I am going to be the joint leader of COLD – you know about COLD, James?’
‘Just about everything.’
‘Well, they call me the Ice Queen – one of my code names – and he will be the Ice King. I’ll have to argue for you to be spared, but I think he’ll see the irony. After all, James, you were responsible for the fact that he now walks on prosthetic legs; and for the disfigurement. His poor face. They say the plastic surgery will eventually bring him back to near normal, but it’s taking a long time. It was you, wasn’t it, James? It was you who shot my lovely General Brutus Clay out of the skies?’ Her face seemed to alter, becoming pinched, any beauty washed away: the eyes hard like granite chips, iced over with her particular brand of lunacy.
‘You’re marrying . . .’ He was about to say, ‘that killer!’ but he just stopped himself in time. ‘Congratulations, Sukie. You’re marrying a legend.’
‘I know, isn’t it wonderful?’
‘Marvellous. Yes, of course, I’ll give you away.’
She began capering around again. Bond wondered what had collapsed her mind – turned her from being a poised, intelligent and beautiful young woman into this caricature. The signs had all been there at their last meeting, yet he had not taken them into account.
‘Come,’ she said finally. ‘I think we should all go over to the house. Something was going on tonight. There was some kind of explosion, and my dear stepsons were alarmed. They’re so proud of the marriage.’
‘Really?’
‘Of course, really. They’re ecstatic. Come.’
She led the way, opening the door for Kauffburger who held Bond and Beatrice by the scruff of their necks, almost lifting them off the ground as he hurried them along. Sukie kicked the door closed after them. Bond watched carefully. His automatic pistol was still lying on the cottage floor, with the spare magazine attached to it.
The house was now a blaze of light and Sukie pushed past Kauffburger and his two prisoners, heading to a door which took them into the kitchen area towards the entrance hallway that Bond remembered from his last violent visit to this place.
‘Hey! Hey! Anybody! Look what I’ve found!’ Sukie was moving ahead, shouting as she went. The first people they saw were Luigi and Angelo, flanked by bodyguards as they came down the stairs.
‘So, the ubiquitous Mr Bond,’ Luigi positively purred.
‘And here without an invitation.’ Angelo joined his brother. ‘Drop them,@; margin-bottom: ad dle Kauffburger.’
Kauffburger was nothing if not literal. He simply let go of Beatrice and Bond, sending them sprawling onto the floor.
‘Being here without an invitation means that you are trespassing, and you know what happens to trespassers, Mr Bond? Trespassers will be shot.’
‘Not until I’ve had some time with him.’ The gravel gruff voice came from the top of the stairs.
Sukie shrieked. ‘Brutie! Oh Brutie, don&rsq
23
WEDDING BELLS
The tall figure came thudding slowly down the stairs, stiff-legged, rolling at each tread, grunting occasionally. It was like watching a robot as the man he had last seen in the strange graveyard in Idaho negotiated his way down to the hall.
Worse was to come as he turned, standing feet apart to keep his balance, to look at Beatrice and Bond. The effect was so horrific that Beatrice gave a little cry.
General Brutus Clay’s face seemed to be made up of partly-hanging flaps of skin. The top of his head was a crinkle of skin, the flaps coming down from his forehead and joined to his jaw. There were four misshapen holes where there had once been eyes, nose and mouth, though parts of these features were discernible: the glint of eyes moving behind the layers of skin, a nostril rebuilt with part of the nose, and a gaping oval which moved, like the mouth of a ventriloquist’s dummy, as he spoke. Where the ears had been there were now two little knobs, like small shells.
‘Take a good look, Mr James von Richthofen Bond. Take a very good look, because this is what you did to me when you played ring-a-roses around that damned mountainside. One day I’ll have a reasonable face, but it will take years of surgery and eons of pain for me. However, I have a woman who loves me, and a great future, as you will hear tomorrow. For now, I just want you to look and ponder on what can happen to anyone. Mr Bond, I can promise you nothing but an eventual very slow death. When, how and where is another matter. Because my bride is – how can I put it – a little simple: not the woman she once was, I will be kind to your woman. She might even live – a pleasant asset as a relaxing aid for those who work under me. She could work well under them.’
His head turned, in a jerky movement, towards Luigi and Angelo with their little knot of bodyguards. ‘I would be obliged if you would search these two now, and take care. Remove everything from them that could be classified as a weapon. I’ve known and respected men like Bond before, and one thing I know about them: they have a way of disguising even the most normal of objects.’
The men descended on them and began frisking them – in Beatrice’s case it was moresat stepmother a matter of groping rather than patting down. They had Bond’s commando dagger, the spare magazines for the ASP, and everything else from him quickly enough. They even took the pen; the man who found it tossed the little plastic item to Kauffb
urger who grasped it as though he had just been handed the most expensive Mont Blanc fountain pen. He all but grovelled in front of the thug.
‘Now,’ Luigi sounded utterly deflated, and was obviously very angry at the General stealing his thunder and allowing Bond to play at being father of the bride. ‘Now, take them up to Beatrice’s room. Remove anything there with which they can arm themselves, and lock the door.’ He turned to look straight at Beatrice, ‘You’ve probably already realized, Ms da Ricci, that your new room is escape-proof. You cannot have failed to notice the bars on the windows, and the fact that your door is made of steel. Just behave yourself, and please, the pair of you, don’t try anything stupid. I would love to have the opportunity of overriding the General’s orders.’
They were hustled up the stairs, along a wide passage until they reached the back of the house and a door set into a steel framework. As the three men were opening the door to push their captives inside, Angelo called after them. ‘Because I wish for my stepmother’s wedding to be good and a proper ceremony, I’ll see if we can find a morning suit to fit Bond.’
‘Fly me back to London and I’ll pick up my own,’ he shouted back.
They were pushed together on the bed, and one of the men covered them with a pistol while the other two went through the cupboards, drawers and dressing table. They piled things they thought of as possible weapons into a trash bag and, after half an hour of searching, seeming satisfied, leaving, turning the key in the lock behind them.
Beatrice threw her arms around him and wept quietly on his shoulder. ‘James . . . ?’ she began with a sob.
‘Don’t. You should already know the room is almost certainly bugged.’ He got off the bed and did a long search, looking mainly for any sign of fibre optic cables from which pictures could be captured. After a long inspection he decided that they were only pulling in sound. He went over to the dressing table, seeing, to his surprise, that they had left the telephone pad and pencil in place. He looked for the lipstick with the electronics for sending the Mayday signal, but could not see it so he mimed to her, asking if she had the thing.
She shook her head and he scowled grimly. Carrying the pad and pencil over to her, he sat down and began to write:
We haven’t got the lipstick or the pen, but we still have the belts. I think we should wait it out and signal tomorrow. If you really cannot bear that, I shall send the signal now. I love you.
She smiled and took the pad and pencil from him:
But will you love me tomorrow, James? Yes, with you I can get through everything, and, of course, we must wait. What do you make of the mad stepmother? Incidentally, I’ve always loved you.
He took the pad and wrote:
Good, we’ll do something about that when we get back to London. In the meantime, try and rest. If anything goes terribly wrong, just activate the Mayday. I shall do the same. As for the stepmother, she’s obviously cracked – a sociopath, possibly a paranoid schizophrenic as well. My guess is that her stepsons and the General became aware of her weaknesses and then played on them. Motive? Money, the family and whatever this crazy plan happens to be.
She responded with:@;erbb
Are we going to get back to London?
He only just stopped himself from writing ‘Cross my heart and hope to die.’ Instead he simply scribbled:
Of course.
They were both tired and soon dropped off to sleep, wakened only by the rattle of the key in the door and the entrance of Luigi and two of his men. They carried a morning suit, shirt, cufflinks, tie, socks and shoes.
Rarely was he shy in front of Beatrice, but on this occasion, with other men present, he felt decidedly embarrassed as he stripped to his underpants and tried on the clothing they had brought.
Beatrice did not make it any easier by commenting that his blue boxers went well with his eyes, but even Bond, fastidious about matters of dress, had to admit that the morning suit was a perfect fit and could have been made for him.
‘How did you do so well with the fit?’ he asked Luigi.
‘Not me. Saul here. He used to work for an undertaker. He can work out anyone’s measurements at a glance.’
‘Ask a stupid question.’ He grimaced at Beatrice.
‘You gotta ’nour,’ Saul told them in his best English.
Bond turned with a smile to Beatrice. ‘Well, my darling, what are you going to wear?’
‘I’m changing in the bathroom, dear.’ She gave him a sly little grin.
‘Leave the door open.’ Pause. ‘Please.’
A little less than an hour later they were both ready with Beatrice asking again and again if he thought the hat was okay with the suit. The suit, as it happened, looked as if it were a genuine Chanel – and probably was.
‘You are certain about the hat?’ she asked again as the heavy mob turned up at the door.
This time it was Roberto in charge, and his English was three shades better than Saul’s. ‘You godda stay wid us,’ he began.
‘Did you live in New York for long?’ Bond asked, then, turning to Beatrice said yes, the hat was perfect.
‘I lived out in Joisey. I was lookin’ after dis guy who needed looking after.’
‘How did you find that out?’
‘He got whacked. Some junky whacked him wid a nine mil piece, just as he was getting outa da car. His own fault. I always tell him, wait for me before ya ged outa the car.’
‘Must look pretty bad on your résumé.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Your CV, your record.’
‘I ain’t got no record.’
‘I mean your employment record.’
‘No, looks pretty good ashly. I whacked the guy right dere on de spot. Took his head clean off. Had a permit as well. De cops couldn’t hang a thing on me.’
‘You were saying we had to stay with you?’
‘Sure. Beatrice here, she stays wid Enrico. You stay wid me. No stoopid tricks else I take your head off, okay?’
‘I’ll be very well behaved.’
‘Good. Now da boss says you can stay on for a while at the reception, only ya gotta be handcuffed ta me, right?’
‘As rain.’
‘That means “yes” in Brit talk?’
‘Affirmative.’
They arrived at the top of the stairs and Roberto whispered, @ riIQ‘I like you, Mr Bond. Look, ya gotta unnerstand this is nothin’ personal. It’s all business.’
‘Isn’t it always?’
‘Tell me about it.’
People were arriving in motor launches and passing through the main hallway, heading for the stairs which descended into the ballroom.
‘We godda go in here.’ Roberto tapped at a door. There was a flurry of noise and little female shrieks from inside. Then the door was opened by Giulliana, Luigi’s wife. ‘Mr Bond,’ she smiled at him and spoke with a throatiness. ‘You bastard. I heard you were here. Too bad you can’t stay. Come in.’
Angelo’s wife, Maria, did not even look at him, but Sukie’s face broke into a big smile. She was in white with a lot of lace and frills.
‘You look wonderful, Sukie.’
‘It’s nice, isn’t it?’ She smiled at him. The smile seemed to engulf him and he felt desolate about what had happened to her. ‘Giulliana and Maria are my matrons of honour.’
‘I suspected as much.’
Then Angelo appeared in the doorway. ‘Right on time, Sukie, your bridegroom awaits.’
‘Ready?’ Bond asked and she gave him a little smile, bit her lower lip and put the veil down over her face.
‘On with the motley, then.’ Bond offered his arm and they set off towards the ballroom which had miraculously become a church. The windows were fake, of course, because there were no real windows, but these were good fakes. The wedding guests filled the huge room, row upon row of them. An altar with flickering candles stood at the end of what passed as the aisle, a priest stood in readiness, dressed in cassock, surplice and stole, holding a breviary and
signing for the General and his best man to rise as the bride was about to enter.
The Tempestas were doing the whole thing in style, for an organ began to pipe up the wedding march. They began the stately walk towards the priest, doing it the American way with a pause at each step, the matrons of honour throwing rose petals out of little baskets in front of the bride. ‘So she can slip on one and break her neck,’ Bond thought, looked up and saw the terrible face of General Brutus Clay, the oval that was his mouth skewed in what was meant to be a smile.
The service was slow going until I
24
A DAY OF DAYS
Two of the toughs brought trays piled with sandwiches and cakes, plus a bottle of wine. They also removed the morning suit. They even wished them goodnight – in Italian.
The prisoners ate, drank and talked about t@olEeither he wedding, mainly for the benefit of anyone listening in from the bugs, making catty remarks about some of the guests. Then, for a long time, they made love. ‘That black doesn’t really go with your eyes,’ he said as he undressed her, getting his own back for her remarks about his underwear when he had changed into the morning suit.
They made love again later, then dropped down the long tunnel towards sleep.
‘How wonderful a day for you.’ Brutus Clay stood at the foot of the bed, and, for a second, they both thought they had plunged into a nightmare as they looked up at this weird thing, with its flaps of healing flesh and half nose, the eyes sunken into the head behind two ragged holes in the skin; the fish mouth moving unnaturally.
‘I’d give anything for a day like this. Your day of days. A day when you know, with absolute certainty, that you are going to hear the massive extent of our plans for a new world which you may or may not be around to enjoy or appreciate. The briefing starts in an hour. My people are arriving at this very moment. So, until later.’ He gave a mock bow and stumped slowly to the door, stiff-legged.