Bond - 27 - Never send flowers

by John Gardner

  `Why?" `Look, I'm exhausted. I...

  `Just a little longer. Please answer Mr Bond." M leaned forward over the table.

  `He had money. Was very wealthy. She would've been the guilty party. Wouldn't have got a cent." `And you think your brother David had something to do with his death? You were going to tell me about it during my visit?" He sounded almost shocked.

  `I've already told you. I was on the verge of putting an end to my brother when you and Fraulein von Grusse arrived at Schloss Drache.

  I was off balance. It was in my mind to say something to you ...

  But Well Yes, okay.

  David was there, and when I went dashing over for the funeral, there was some whispering and giggling between him and Maeve. It didn't feel right, that's all. Maeve hinted later, but they were only hints, so I don't know for certain. Anyway, it's all over now. `I hardly think it's all over, Mr Dragonpol. You knew what David was doing, though you did little to stop him." `Please. I'm...

  `Tired, yes. Yes, we're all tired. One more question." M had become peevish. `A question regarding your sister, Maeve. What did she think of David?" `She'd have done anything for him. She adored him." `Even though she also had more than an inkling about his killing trips?" `Yes. Naturally she wanted that to stop. She wanted him treated. But she really would have done anything to help him.

  `Like yourself?" `No. I saw only one way. To have him permanently removed. Maeve ... Hort ... would never have condoned that. She loved him very much." `And she did know he was a killer?

  That he went out, planned assassinations, and then came back to get on with building the museum?" `Yes, she knew. I think she would have killed for him: to keep him safe." `Really." M looked at his watch and seemed surprised by the time. `Enough for now. We'll convene again at midday. You can take him away.

  Crisp, as though on the bridge of a Royal Navy ship.

  Daniel Dragonpol sagged with fatigue and allowed himself to be led from the room.

  `This is all very interesting." M scanned the papers Tanner had put in front of him. Then he looked up at Bond. `You know that we had an address from Daniel Dragonpol? I mean an address for David?" `No, sir." Bond felt waves of fatigue rolling in over him. He thought his old Chief's stamina was quite extraordinary for a man of his age.

  `When the Italians first brought him in, they asked if he knew where his brother had been staying. It was some hole-in-the-wall hotel tucked away behind La Scala. They searched it. Found odd clothes, bits of disguise, but no flowers either in or out of a cooler." `Really?" He could not summon up a great deal of enthusiasm.

  `Really, James, yes. Not even a petal, let alone a bud, or six buds. By the way, I'm truly sorry about the Chantry girl. Decent member of our sister service, I think. Really pretty terrible." `I haven't completely bought the accidental shooting, sir." `No. Neither have I, to tell the truth.

  `Why did you send her directly to us last night, sir?" `Send her.?` `She was at the hotel when we got back from Como. Said you'd sent her." M looked grimly concerned. `Said I'd sent her?

  No. I didn't even know she was here in Milan.

  That's rum. `Very." Bond passed a hand over his brow, and M looked at him closely, like a doctor examining a patient.

  `You look all in, James." He peered closer.

  `Look, why don't you and that nice von Grusse girl take some tine off. You've been working quite hard after all.

  Through the fog of his weariness, Bond felt surprised. It was unlike M to even suggest something like this, for he strongly disapproved of his agent's way of life. It struck him as being particularly odd now that Fredericka had been welcomed into the service over which M held total authority. The Old Man rarely condoned anything even hinting at a liaison between two members of the service unless he had some ulterior motive.

  `Are you sure, sir?"

  "Course I'm sure, James. Wouldn't give you time off if I wasn't sure. Take the rest of the week.

  It's only, what? Tuesday morning? Report back to me in London on Monday. Leave your whereabouts with the Duty Officer, though, just in case. Right?" `Thank you, sir. Yes. He turned and nodded Fredericka towards the door.

  `Oh, James?" `Sir?" `Maeve Horton?" `What about her, sir?" `She strike you as being odd?" `Not really. Gave me a bit of a come-on.

  Attractive enough, in a gipsyish kind of way. Why?" `I'm unhappy about what Dragonpol said. Just a hunch. A thought." He sniffed the air, as an old seaman will sniff for signs of a change in the weather.

  `I'm going to have her pulled in by our German friends. Maybe get them to take her to London. We'll be moving Daniel back as well, if the Italians are cooperative." `Right, sir." He thought it was not for him to reason why. The words, `but to do or die' came into his head and he went deathly cold. Tiredness, he thought.

  One of the Italian uniformed men drove them back to the hotel, and on the way, he suggested to Fredericka that they should leave Italy. `We have seats booked on that flight to Athens on Thursday. Why don't we see if we can change them? Get out now?

  I don't know about you, Flick, but I'm fed up with Milan. Fed up with the Dragonpol business as well.

  `Oh, yes please. Please let's do that.

  `Then can we do it before we pass out? Just get our stuff, check out and head for the airport." `Gladly. I've never been to Athens." * By eleven-thirty that morning, they were driving into Athens, in a hired white Porsche. From the airport, they had tried to get bookings at the famous Grande Bretagne, and the equally famous Le King George.

  Eventually they settled for the Hilton which he assured Fredericka was the most beautiful of all that chain's hotels.

  She believed him only when they arrived and walked through the brown and white marble entrance into the lavish interior with its never-ending halls, restaurants, arcades and the two beautiful atria.

  She was even more ecstatic about the suite which had everything, it appeared, in triplicate.

  `Oh, darling, I'm going to have a lovely time here." `Yes, Flick.

  We can do the Acropolis and the Parthenon..

  `Yes, I suppose we could fit those in as well." She gave him a dazzling smile and said she was going to freshen up. Why, he thought, did everyone else seem to be fit and wide awake when he felt absolutely shattered?

  He picked up the telephone and dialled the international number for the screened line which would put him in touch, in complete privacy, with the Duty Officer at the headquarters building in London.

  `Predator,' he announced when the other end picked up.

  `Yes, Predator?" `The boss wanted me to leave an address. I'm at the Hilton in Athens.

  `Lucky somebody." The Duty Officer was a woman. She was also, he considered, not politically correct.

  There were two bathrooms, so he took a shower, then briskly rubbed himself down with a towel, slipped into the bathrobe and went out into the bedroom.

  Fredericka was lying on the bed wearing next to nothing.

  `I've put the "Do Not Disturb" sign on the door, darling. Come and disturb me.

  It was almost two hours later before they both fell into a deep and contented sleep.

  He was wakened by the telephone and, for a moment, did not know where he was. Forcing himself up from the ocean bed of sleep, he reached out for the phone, while Fredericka grumbled as she came awake.

  `Predator?" the voice at the distant end asked.

  `Who wants to know?" `Levon.

  `What's your occupation?" `I make cartoon balloons.

  `Then you're a good man." `Predator?" `Yes." `Flash urgent from M.

  Return London soonest.

  The dragons are loose. You want me to repeat that?" `The last sentence." `The dragons are loose." `Is that dragons plural?" `Yes, sir. You copy?" `Tell him I'll be back soonest." He replaced the instrument and cursed. Twice.

  `What is it?" Fredericka, naked, leaning up on one arm.

  `Get yourself dressed. We have to get to London." Already he was dialling the airport to see if they could get
a flight out that night.

  It was already eight-thirty.

  Seconds later he was pulling on clothes, and throwing things into the garment bag, checking the shielded section of the briefcase, and calling for - Fredericka to hurry. `We've got just over an hour and a half to get a plane to Heathrow via Paris." `Why this?" He told her and she queried dragons just as he had done.

  They had the bill ready for him at Reception. `If you miss the flight, there'll be a room for you here tonight, Mr Bond,' the girl at the desk told him.

  Outside, one of the car valets asked for the number and Bond gave him the little brass ticket.

  The boy retrieved the keys and walked the fifty yards or so to where they could see the little white Porsche was parked.

  Bond tapped his foot, willing the boy to get the thing going. The streets out of Athens are nearly always a race track no matter what time of day or night. The boy was sliding behind the wheel. Then the whole area lit up. A great crimson flame shot from within the car before anyone's eardrums were assaulted by the explosion.

  Bond pushed Fredericka to the ground, covering his head and flattening himself across her as pieces of metal clattered around them.

  Then came the silence followed by the screams and the terrible scent-a mixture of gasoline and the sweet sickly odour of incinerated flesh.

  Fredericka was just behind him as he raced to what was left of the car. `Dear God,' she said, with a curious little sob. `Oh, dear God,' pointing.

  His eyes followed her finger. Something had been thrown out, landing intact just to the right of the shattered and burning wreck that had been their car.

  `Jesus,' he said.

  There, on the ground, almost at his feet, was a pure white rose, its petals tipped in blood red.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  THE WHITE KNIGHT

  In spite of urgent appeals by M, the Greek police did not let Bond and Fredericka leave for London.

  Instead, they were subjected to lengthy interrogations, and it was almost thirty-six hours before they were allowed to sign statements and go. As with anything else in Greece, time appeared to have no meaning.

  So it was not until late afternoon on the Thursday that they attended what amounted to a Council of War in M's office.

  Bill Tanner drove them in from Heathrow, talking the whole way, briefing them on the situation.

  The villa, on the outskirts of Milan, in which they had interrogated Daniel Dragonpol, belonged to the local police, who shared it with the Italian equivalent of the Security Service. For several years they had used this house as offices and a special briefing centre for police and troops preparing for VIP visitors. Because of the limitations of its use, the facility had no truly secure area in which to keep anyone under detention.

  During Dragonpol's long debriefing, the Italians had argued about the relative merits of preparing some makeshift accommodation on the spot, or driving Daniel five miles or so to a police precinct with cells. In the end, it was decided to secure an area on the spot, so new locks and some bars were fitted to one of the outbuildings. They reasoned that, if they left a pair of police officers with the subject, he could be kept safe until midday, when M had asked for the next session to begin. There was no cause for alarm. After all this was not a high-risk suspect.

  Unfortunately the bulk of those who had been working the case had done almost twenty-four hours on duty by the time M stopped the interrogation. The result was some very tired people who wanted sleep, and only sleep.

  The two police officers detailed to act as guards for Daniel Dragonpol were as tired as anybody else. They locked themselves into the specially prepared outbuilding which had been equipped with two bunks and a chair. Their instructions were to see that Daniel got as much rest as possible, and they planned to watch over him in shifts one man sleeping on the spare bunk while the other remained awake. They had taken two flasks of coffee in with them, and nobody seriously considered Daniel Dragonpol to be dangerous. As one of the senior police officers later said, `He seemed relieved that his brother was dead, and untroubled about the future. He appeared to have grasped the fact that he would probably serve some kind of a prison sentence for manslaughter, but that didn't seem to worry him." At just before nine-thirty in the morning, several well-rested police officers were bused out to the facility from the centre of Milan. Two of these fresh men were immediately instructed to relieve the Dragonpol guards.

  When they reached the outbuilding, they found the door open and the two police guards dead.

  One had burns on his face, and had been garrotted with his own tie. The other had died from gunshot wounds, killed at close range with his own pistol.

  In all probability this man was already unconscious when his killer had placed a pillow over his head and fired through it twice, thereby reducing the noise but in no way impeding the deadly progress of the bullets.

  The strangled policeman had been stripped of his uniform. There was no trace of Dragonpol and few clues as to where he had gone.

  Neither was there any way to determine the sequence of events. A spilled flask of coffee indicated that Dragonpol, most likely, had been allowed to pour his own beverage which he had flung into the face of one cop, turning and felling the second man with a blow to the head.

  One thing had been proved definitely. When the strangled cop went down, his watch had struck the floor and smashed, giving investigators a time frame. The deaths, and following escape, had taken place at six-thirty, barely an hour after the interrogation finished. The only other certainty was that Daniel Dragonpol was loose and dangerous.

  `Looks like our Daniel was really David,' Bond mused.

  `We consider that an absolute certainty,' Tanner agreed. They had just come off the M4 motorway, and were heading into the centre of London.

  `So who did Carmel think she was bringing to us?" Fredericka asked.

  The bomb incident in Athens had shaken her considerably.

  `Yes, what did Carmel think she was doing?" The scene on the rooftops of the Duomo replayed in Bond's mind. Carmel waving and calling. Then the lethal walking stick coming up. Carmel shouting, `No! James, no! He's.

  He saw the stick again. Heard the shout in his head for a second time. Now, in retrospect, he wondered if the man lifting the stick was really only raising it in greeting, just before the shots crashed out.

  `Maybe... he began. Then, `Maybe we all made some terrible mistake." The more he thought the scene through, the more he became convinced that Carmel, and the man they thought was David, came in peace. Presently he asked, `And Maeve?" The Chief of Staff gave a long sigh. `The German police did not do as we asked. They did not even have one man watching Schloss Drache.

  When the orders went out to pull Maeve, they found she had flown-probably two days ago.

  `And one or the other of them took a shot at us by filling the Porsche with explosives, killing an unfortunate Greek boy instead." Bond did not seem to be talking to anyone in particular.

  `Did he have time to catch up with us?" Fredericka was now more animated.

  Tanner sashayed the car between a bus and a taxi. The cabby did not like being cut up and made it clear. `And you, mate,' Tanner said quietly, then carried on as if nothing had happened. `If Daniel were really David then we can't rely on anything he's told us. The place behind La Scala, where David was supposed to be hiding out, for instance.

  That's almost certainly a red herring. Yes, David probably could have caught up with you. It's even possible that he has another bolt hole, complete with the means for a disguise, and a cache of weapons and explosives. He might even have spotted you out at the aimort and decided to have a go a spur of the moment kind of thing." `That's not his usual MO." Bond still sounded distant.

  `Who knows? He went for high-profile targets of opportunity and usually made longterm preparations. But in your case he would certainly have made an exception. Time is on his side. After all, he's got until Sunday morning before he pulls off the royal assassination. />
  `You still think he's going for that?" `It's the reason some of the best people in the business are sitting waiting for you in M's office at this very moment. And you, James, are the designated slayer of dragons.

  Indeed, the group sitting and standing around the glass and chrome desk in M's office did consist of the best. He recognized a senior Special Air Service officer, and a commander from the Metropolitan Police. The latter, whose name he thought was Robb, controlled the Diplomatic Bodyguard Section, which included the so-called Royal Detectives. There was also a roly-poly little man with a constant smile-introduced simply as Ben who turned out to be Head of Security for the Euro Disney complex, some twenty miles east of Paris. Yet another member of the group had sham, chiselled features and looked distinctly French. He also did not seem at ease in civilian clothes.

  `This is Colonel Fontaine, of GIGN,' M introduced them, and the Frenchman gave a little nod of recognition. `Captain Bond, you've worked with GIGN beJore I think. Colonel Veron speaks highly of you.

  There was a slight release of tension in the room which Bond put down to the stiff attitude Fontaine had obviously been taking. The French Special Forces Unit-GIGN-is not known for willing cooperation, even with its allies, and particularly on its home ground.

  `The French authorities have kindly agreed to members of the SAS and, of course, detectives from the royal bodyguard to assist in this operation." In spite of this, M did not appear to be a happy man.

  There had probably been a battle of wills before Bill Tanner had brought them into the office.

  `Then Her Royal Highness is definitely taking the princes to France on Sunday?" Bond tried to make it sound matter-of-fact, but the news was worrying. `Doesn't she realize...?" `No, Captain Bond." It was the policeman, Commander Robb, who answered. `We've put it to Princess Diana. Her answer was completely uncompromising. She says that they're always possible targets for terrorists and to quote her "nut cases," so why should this be any different? She also said she had complete faith in her detectives, the GIGN, and the SAS." `The point is,' M sounded as though he were about to become highly sarcastic. `The point is, we have yet to ask her if she has faith in you, James." `Me, sir?" `Mmmm. You see we've come to a kind of decision in your absence. You ever play that game Tag when you were at school?" `Yes, sir, only we called it He. There was a dangerous variation known as Chain He." `Well, be that as it may, to quote from our various childhoods, you, James, are He or It, or whatever other designation. You're the one who's going to get us out of this.