by John Gardner
Completed twenty-two pages of notes on bear-baiting in the sixteenth century; visited Blenheim Palace to take a look at the archives which kept me busy over the weekend. Hope to see you soon. Love as ever. Judith.
Anyone with common sense could have deciphered it. Judith was the code for crash meeting. The text told Bond exactly when and where: The Bear Hotel, Woodstock, near Oxford. Room twenty-two at eight o’clock on Sunday night – the room number was exact, the time was 16.00 hours plus four. Either something was up, or – as the course was nearing completion – plans had been altered.
The Bear Hotel, Woodstock, lies in the main square of that crowded little town which stands a few minutes’ walk from the grounds leading to Blenheim Palace, that gorgeous gift to the First Duke of Marlborough from a grateful sovereign. The Palace was designed by Vanbrugh and the magnificent grounds landscaped by Capability Brown. The main Palace doors contain a replica of the intricate locks which once graced the main gates of the city of Warsaw, and these days people travel to see it in its historic context; for one of the great leaders of the twentieth century, Winston Churchill, was not only born in the Palace, but also lies buried in nearby Bladon. Bond had often come here, driving from London on a Saturday, spending the day walking in the grounds, simply enjoying the breathtaking views. He remembered one Saturday in October, some years before, standing on the bridge which spans the main lake, and watching the autumn sun draw a golden spear in the water. The spear often returned to him in a dream, as though it was some kind of omen.
Blenheim and Woodstock are magnets for tourists from all over the world, and though the Palace is closed in November, the inordinately beautiful grounds and parkland remain open for part of the day, and now, on the Sunday, with wood-smoke in the air and the paths sprinkled with the gold and red leaves of autumn, Bond once more stood on that same bridge, watching the same red sun, low in the sky, produce a similar effect – a spear of light pointing directly at him. Now, he wondered, if that spear reflected on water was indeed an omen.
He had taken a room for the night at the nearby Feathers Hotel, partly for security, and partly because he preferred it to the more famous Bear.
He completed his walk and returned to The Feathers where he put his feet up for a few hours before taking the short stroll to The Bear. It was with some distaste he noted that the whiff of oil and potato chips hung heavy in the evening air, coming from pubs that advertised ‘Pub Grub’ or ‘Good Food’, a pair of terms Bond would have liked to see banned from the English language, just as he would, if pushed, like to see the countless young people crowding those very bars banished to some kind of National Service – preferably in the armed forces. That, he considered, would take violence off the streets of country towns, and make men out of the louts who littered pavements and got drunk at the sniff of a barmaid’s apron.
He dodged into the front entrance of The Bear, neatly keeping clear of the reception area at the rear of the narrow passage leading through from the entrance hall, and squeezing into the small elevator that would take him to Room twenty-two.
Both M and his Chief of Staff were waiting.
‘Q Branch have just swept the place,’ M said as a form of greeting. ‘It appears to be clean, though nowadays who’s to know.’
Bond gave both his chief and his closest friend within the Service, friendly smiles then waited for what would doubtless be laid on him. Judging by their faces, the news was not good.
M waved to a chair, and 007 sat, still waiting until M asked, ‘You remember BAST?’
‘How could I forget, sir. After all they seem to be our main opponents.’
‘After your hide, 007. Out to get you, take you out, ice you, buy the farm for you. At least that’s what the doomsayers would have us believe.’
‘I would have thought the missile incident had already pointed us in that general direction.’
‘Yes,’ M flapped his hand as though trying to waft bad air away from his nostrils. ‘But this time we have a chance to lay our hands on at least one of them. We know when they’re going to set you up and who’s going to do it. What we don’t know, is where.’
‘Then, with due respect, sir, I would have thought we should get cracking and find out exactly where.’
Bill Tanner rubbed his hands together. ‘That’s really anywhere of your choosing, James.’
‘Mine?’
‘Yes,’ M’s clear grey eyes were locked on to Bond’s face. ‘We would like to send you away for a Christmas holiday, 007.’
‘Tethered goat,’ said Bond.
‘Stalking-horse,’ Tanner corrected him. ‘Sort of Christmas horse, so that BAST can come down your chimney and knock your socks off. In this case BAST will take on the human shape of a woman.’
‘Ah,’ said Bond with a wry smile, ‘you want me to play slow horses and fast women.’
‘Something you’ve been known to do before this, 007.’ M did not even twinkle, let alone return the smile.
‘I have any option?’
M shook his head. ‘None whatsoever. BAST already know far too much; they’re going to have a go during Landsea ’89, and they regard you as a mild threat. Mind you, they don’t yet seem to know all the details: such as the six SAS people you might be commanding for the bodyguard operation.’
‘Funny, I hadn’t heard about them either, sir.’ Bond paused, then looked from M to Tanner and back again. ‘If you know all this, why can’t you deal with BAST on its own terms? Take them out before they do their bit?’
M sighed, ‘We know the names of their ringleaders; we have descriptions of two of them, but we have no idea how large their Brotherhood is, or really how fanatical they are. The four or so leaders are fanatical enough, though the mastermind is, we deduce, more concerned with a return for his capital investment than the political aspect.’
‘We wouldn’t normally put you at risk, James . . .’ Tanner began.
‘Not much.’
‘Not with Landsea ’89 coming up,’ M said firmly. ‘We would like to get our hands on one of their leading people, though. So what about Christmas?’
‘Not my favourite time of the year.’ Bond looked down his nose. ‘I can’t stand all that bonhomie, and families getting together around the festive board, but that’s probably because I have no real family.’ Tracy, his wife of only a few hours, flashed through his mind. Christmases would have been good if she had lived, he thought. Even an uncharacteristic picture of the two of them by a log fire with presents and a tree went flickering in and out of his mind. Then he saw the reflected spear of light again and wondered how all this would end. He looked bleakly at M. ‘I suppose you’ve already got somewhere lined up, though, sir.’
M nodded, ‘You recall that a few years ago I sent you for some rest and recuperation. A villa on Ischia, in the bay of Naples?’
‘That was in summer . . .’ He recalled it vividly. Secluded, beautiful setting, almost idyllic. You only had to drive a couple of miles for food. The rest of the time you were all set up by the pool, with maid service, a cook, if you wanted one, and spectacular surroundings. ‘The Service paid for it, I know, but they only open them up for the summer.’
‘I think I can persuade the owner.’ M had his stubborn look grappled to his face.
After a couple of heartbeats, Bond said – ‘Christmas on Ischia, then, sir. Just tell me what to do.’
‘First,’ M began, ‘you’ll have to run the thing solo. We can give you only modest cover. Nothing fancy, and certainly not the local police . . .’ He went on for the next hour, and as he progressed, Bond realised that, as ever, the whole business would be down to him. Sit there and wait for a woman out to kill him, and who would possibly have a back-up; then outwit her; and, finally, bring her back into the UK with everyone, including himself, alive and kicking.
‘Run of the mill sort of job really,’ he said when M stopped talking.
‘The kind of thing you should be able to do, armed with a butterfly-net and a killing jar, 0
07.’
‘I’ll settle for the killing jar.’ Bond smiled. ‘Preferably 9mm with a lot of kick to it. You know, the kind of thing any Christmas stalking-horse carries around.’
At just about the same moment as Bond was being apprised of how he would spend a happy Christmas, Harry and Bill were putting some bad news to their old friend the Petty Officer Engineer.
‘It’s not that we don’t like you, Blackie,’ Bill was saying. ‘We’re under a certain amount of pressure ourselves.’
‘I mean we didn’t know they took photographs in that place, and there’s a fair old collection now as you can see.’ Harry laid out some thirty black and white prints on the table.
They were in Harry’s room at his usual Plymouth hotel. The photographs, with their grainy texture, looked almost as dirty as the cavortings they had captured for all time. The PO looked very miserable. ‘You’d send these to the wife?’ It was not so much a question as a shocked statement.
‘No, ’course we wouldn’t,’ Harry’s voice was low, soothing. Oil on troubled waters. ‘We’re in the mire as much as you are, Blackie. We didn’t know.’
‘And there’s all that money.’ Bill tried to look as miserable as his colleague. ‘I mean we put things on our expense accounts. Now, we’re both in the same boat. It’s coming to something when two companies, with two different interests, turn down your expenses.’
‘And we always understood that place with the girls was buckshee. They never charged us a penny before.’
‘How . . . How much are we talking about?’ The Petty Officer was chalk-white. He could feel the blood draining from his cheeks.
Harry sighed. ‘Seven thousand, eight hundred and twenty-five pounds.’
‘And sixty-two pence,’ Bill added.
‘But I can’t . . . There’s no way. The wife’ll kill me – at best leave me – and there’s no way I can get my hands on that kind of money.’
‘Second mortgage on the house?’ Harry asked.
‘First bloody mortgage isn’t paid off yet.’ The gloom was almost tangible.
Harry gathered the photographs up into a neat pile. ‘They have offered us a way out, but I said you’d as like do it as fly using your arms.’
‘What is it? The way out?’
‘Well, I don’t think you’d want to hear it.’
Bill, who had poured them each a stiff whisky, interrupted. ‘They’re offering money on top, though. Best tell him.’
‘Well,’ Harry sighed again. ‘Okay, it gets us all off the hook, and they’ll throw in one hundred K for you, Blackie, seeing as how you’d be taking the biggest risk.’
‘A hundred grand? For me? Who’ve I got to kill?’
‘It’s not a matter of killing.’ Harry moved closer, and began to make the Petty Officer the offer which, in the circumstances, he could not afford to refuse.
6
SEE NAPLES AND . . .
Naples was not James Bond’s favourite city. Now, sitting in a bumper-to-bumper, horn-hooting, yelling traffic jam, cramming one of the narrow streets leading down to the harbour, he placed it almost at the bottom of his list. The double-lane freeway from the airport had not been too bad, but, as ever, the city streets were crowded and in a state of chaos. To make matters worse it was raining: that fine, soaking misty rain that is even more unpleasant than an out-and-out downpour.
This was a city that time had forgotten, Bond reflected, as he eased the uncertain hired Fiat behind an unsteady lorry overloaded with bottled water. Naples had never regained its status as a tourist resort. Instead it had become a transit point. People arrived at the airport, maybe stayed a couple of nights to ‘do’ Pompeii, and were either whisked off to Sorrento, or made this journey down to the ferries for Capri or Ischia, the two islands that form the gate to the Bay of Naples.
Constantly the two islands were regarded as passé or outdated, yet that was where the tourists or socialites went. The only people who stayed were the Neapolitans, or NATO sailors from the various naval vessels which tied up off the coast, in the safety of the bay. For sailors it was one hell of a city with its blatant red-light district and the area running down the foothills between the Castel Sant’Elmo and the Municipal Building. This last was crowded with bars, clip-joints and gaudy fleeting pleasures. It was known, like George V Street in the old Malta days, as The Gut. The Gut saw every possible depravity. It was, Bond thought, near enough like some parts of Pompeii must have been before Vesuvius slammed its lava down over the city. The traffic moved about six feet, and again ground to a halt, while shouts from drivers and police filtered back through the closed, steamy windows of the car.
In summer the earth-red houses and terracotta roofs of Naples soaked up the sun and filled the streets with dust; in winter the same walls seemed to blot up the rain so that the buildings took on an even more crumbling look, as though they might turn to sludge and slide into the sea. Over it all, threatening Vesuvius glowered.
At the Ischia and Capri ferry points, cars and ramshackle wagons stretched back, clogging the restricted space. A large black limo tried to jump the line, and Bond watched, amused, as a police-officer leaned into the car and backhanded the uniformed chauffeur. In London the cop would have been in big trouble. Here, the driver probably knew he would never work in Naples again if he complained.
After the frustration of the slow journey from the airport, the waiting cars and wagons boarded the ferry with relative speed, though with much shouting, waving of arms and protestations to God and the Blessed Virgin.
Bond left the car on the vehicle deck, and climbed through the crowd of passengers to seek out a reasonably sheltered part of the ferry. Shouldering his way to the little bar he reluctantly bought a plastic beaker of what was supposed to be coffee. The liquid tasted like sweet, coloured water but at least it moistened his throat. Once at the Villa Capricciani he would be able to pick and choose for himself.
As the ferry began to move out into the bay, Bond looked back across the black, oily water, wondering what Naples had looked like in its days of glory. Once its beauty was inspirational. Parthenope the Siren had thrown herself into the sea for love of Ulysses and was washed up on the golden shore that became the Bay of Naples. ‘See Naples and die’, Bond smiled to himself. The old Italian saying had a double edge at one time: see Naples and die for its beauty; then the second edge when the seaport had become the focal point of typhoid and cholera. Now? Well, there had been slums and depravity here for decades, with an increase since the end of World War Two. He decided that the old phrase could become triple-edged now that AIDS was spreading across the world like the new Black Death. But the same was true of most ancient ports.
Perhaps it was the thought of age and decay, of lost glory and of the current world tensions, that plunged Bond into feelings of concern and anxiety as the coastline shrank in the ferry’s wake. Undercover once more, he knew the risks for he had gambled his life in this way on many occasions before. He was aware that the day could easily come when the odds would be stacked too heavily against him. The last time he had made this trip had been on a glorious summer day, when he was looking forward to rest and healing relaxation. This time – see Naples and . . . what? Die or live? Win or lose?
So it was in a somewhat sombre mood that, an hour later, he looked out over the sea on the port beam towards the brooding Aragonese Castle, shaped like a small-scale model of Gibraltar, with its umbilical road reaching towards Ischia. Within ten minutes they were docking at Porta d’Ischia, and the whole shouting, jostling and yelling match began again. The cars and lorries made their way onto the very restricted area around the berthing point, to the accompaniment of horn blasts and more shouting. Planks were laid down to assist some of the heavier vehicles and the entire operation was made even more hazardous by the slick of rain on quayside and ramp, while the throng of pedestrians seemed to delight in walking directly in front of the slow-moving vehicles.
He had carefully checked the car before getting behind the wh
eel, for these people of BAST did not care about the lives of innocent victims. Then, after what seemed an eternity, he finally negotiated the Fiat off the ferry, around some makeshift stalls still selling tourist junk on the off-chance of catching some gullible holidaymaker who had left home and hearth to spend the festive season here on the undeniably beautiful shambles that was Ischia, the peaceful island that had known the crack and blast of history, and seen much violent death as well as happiness in its time.
He drove west, feeling at his most vulnerable. He had carefully salted the ground for whoever was supplying BAST with information, declaring to a lot of people, in and out of the wardroom at Yeovilton RNAS, that he was heading for the Bay of Naples, to spend a quiet Christmas alone.
They knew that BAST was filching information from Yeovilton; just as they knew that the oily Baradj had fingered him, putting the Cat – Saphii Boudai – in charge. As with Baradj, Hamarik, and Adwan, there were no photographic descriptions available. At best the pictures were blurred, photofits provided by people who had caught fleeting glimpses of the quartet which formed the leadership of BAST. All Bond knew for sure was that the Cat was a woman, variously reported to be short and tall, fat and thin, beautiful and repellent. The only matching feature was that she had very dark hair.
He was travelling in a rented car, which was bad security to start with, and, until he reached the Villa Capricciani, he was unarmed. It was only after M had given the final instructions that Bond had also realised, from memory, that the villa itself was a security nightmare. As he drove the narrow, dangerous roads he constantly scanned the rear-view mirror catching sight of vehicles that had been on the ferry – a Volvo here, a VW there. But none seemed to linger, or take any interest in him.
On the road between Lacco and Forio, respectively on the north-west and west of the island, he turned off, down the very narrow, metalled road which led to the villa. Nothing seemed to have changed on the island, everything was how he remembered it, from the destructive, near suicidal driving, to the sudden beautiful views that came, unexpectedly, at a turn in the road. There were also other aspects: handfuls of peeling buildings, the open front of a cluttered shop, a dowdy petrol station. In summer these last would seem romantic. In winter they came into clear, depressing focus. Now he looked for the gates set into the high, grey stone wall to the right, hoping that nothing at the villa had fundamentally altered.