by Ian Fleming
AND NOW it was a month later and Mr Tanaka had become ‘Tiger’ and Commander Bond had become ‘Bondo-san’. Tiger had explained his name for James Bond. ‘James,’ he had said. ‘That is a difficult work in Japanese. And it does not convey sufficient respect. Bond-san is too much like the Japanese word bonsan, which means a priest, a greybeard. The hard consonants at the end of “Bond” are also not easy for the Japanese, and when these occur in a foreign word we add an O. So you are Bondo-san. That is acceptable?’
‘Does Bondo mean a pig or anything like that in Japanese?’
‘No. It has no meaning.’
‘Forgive my asking. The Japanese seem to enjoy many private jokes at the expense of the gaijin. I referred the other day to a friend of mine called “Monkey” McCall whom we used to call “Munko”. You told me that this was an unmentionable word in your language. So I thought “Bondo” might be equally unmentionable.’
‘Have no fear. It is totally respectable.’
The weeks had passed without any significant progress in Bond’s mission except in the direction of what seemed to be a genuine friendship between Bond, Tiger and Dikko. Outside working hours the three men became well nigh inseparable, but Bond sensed that on their excursions into the countryside and during their roistering in the evenings he was being constantly, but with great discretion, sized up. Dikko had confirmed Bond’s impression. ‘I think you’re making progress, champ. Tiger would regard it as dishonourable to lead you up the garden path and then pull the rug out from under you with a flat refusal. Something’s definitely cooking in the background, but what it is I haven’t the faintest idea. I guess the ball’s with Tiger’s superiors, but with Tiger on your side. And, in the vernacular, Tiger’s got what’s called “a broad face”. That means he has great powers as a fixer. And this ON he’s got in respect of Britain is a huge factor in your favour. What he gave you on your first meeting was an unheard-of presento, as we call it here. But watch out! You’re piling up a great heap of ON in respect of Tiger. And if it comes to striking a bargain, I hope you’ve got a pretty massive presento up your sleeve so that the ON on both sides is more or less evenly balanced. None of this salmon and shrimp business! Have got? Can do?’
‘I’ m not so sure,’ said Bond doubtfully. The Macao ‘Blue Route’ material had already dwindled in his mind to the size of a minnow in comparison with the salmon that was Tiger’s to give or withhold. The impact of the single slice he had handed Bond had already been formidable. The test of the 200-megaton bomb had duly taken place and had been greeted by the public uproar anticipated by Moscow. But counteraction by the West had been swift. On the excuse of protecting Soviet personnel in England from demonstrations of public animosity, they had been confined within a radius of twenty miles of their homes, and ‘for their protection’ police were thick round the Soviet Embassy, the consulates and their various trading offices. There had, of course, been reprisals on British diplomats and journalists in Russia, but these were to have been expected. Then President Kennedy had come out with the strongest speech of his career, and had committed total reprisals from the United States in the event of a single nuclear device being exploded by the Soviet Union in any country in the world outside Soviet territory. This thundering pronouncement, which had produced a growl of dismay from the American man-in-the-street, was greeted from Moscow by the feeble riposte that they would take similar action in answer to any Western nuclear device exploded on the territory of the U.S.S.R. or her allies.
A few days later Bond had been summoned again to Tiger’s underground hideout. ‘You will not of course repeat this,’ Tiger had said with his wicked smile. ‘But action in respect of the matter of which you are privately aware has been indefinitely postponed by the Central Authority.’
‘Thank you for this private information,’ Bond had said. ‘But you do realize how your kindness of three weeks ago has greatly alleviated the international tension, particularly in relation to my country. My country would be immensely grateful if they knew of your personal generosity to me. Have I grounds for hoping for your further indulgence?’ Bond had got used to the formalities of Oriental circumlocution, although he had not yet attained the refinements of Dikko’s speech with Tiger, which included at least one four-letter word in each flowery sentence and which caused Tiger much amusement.
‘Bondo-san, this implement which you wish to rent from us, in the most improbable event that it is made available, will command a very high price. As a fair trader, what has your country to offer in exchange for the full use of MAGIC 44?’
‘We have a most important intelligence network in China known as the Macao “Blue Route”. The fruits of this source would be placed entirely at your disposal.’
Melancholy settled over Tiger’s massive face, but deep down in the Tartar eyes there was a wicked gleam. ‘I am very much afraid that I have bad news for you, Bondo-san. “Blue Route” has been penetrated by my organization almost since its inception. We already receive the entire fruits of that source. I could show you the files if you wish. We have simply renamed it “Route Orange”, and I admit that the material is very acceptable. But we already have it. What other goods had you in mind for exchange?’
Bond had to laugh. The pride of Section J – and of M., for that matter! The work, the expense, the danger of running the ‘Blue Route’ . And at least fifty per cent in aid of Japan! By God, his eyes were being opened on this trip. This news would put a fine cat among the pigeons at H.Q. He said blandly, ‘We have many other commodities. Now that you have demonstrated the undoubted value of your implement, may I suggest that you name your price?’
‘You believe that you have something on your shelves that is of comparable value? Perhaps material from a similar, though no doubt inferior, source that would be of equal importance in the defence of our country?’
‘Undoubtedly,’ said Bond staunchly. ‘But, my dear Tiger, would it not be a good idea, once your mind is made up, for you to pay a visit to London and inspect the shelves for yourself? I am sure my Chief would be honoured to receive you.’
‘You do not possess full powers of negotiation?’
‘That would be impossible, my dear Tiger. Our security is such that even I have not full knowledge of all our merchandise. So far as I personally am concerned, I am only in a position to pass on to my Chief the substance of what you say or to render you any other personal services you might ask of me.’
For a moment, Tiger Tanaka looked thoughtful. He seemed to be turning Bond’s last words over in his mind. Then he closed the interview with the invitation to the geisha restaurant, and Bond went off with mixed feelings to report to Melbourne and London what he had gleaned.
In the room where he now sat after the geisha party, and where Tiger had just cheerfully threatened him with death, tigers’ heads snarled at him from the walls and gnashed at him from the floor. His ashtray was enclosed in a stuffed tiger’s paw and the chair in which he was sitting was upholstered in tiger’s skin. Mr Tanaka had been born in the year of the Tiger, whereas Bond, as Tiger had taken much pleasure in telling him, had been born in the year of the Rat.
Bond took a deep drink of saké and said, ‘My dear Tiger, I would hate to put you to the inconvenience of having to remove me from the face of the earth. You mean that this time the cedar may not bow before the typhoon? So be it. This time you have my very topmost word of honour.’
Tiger pulled up a chair and faced Bond across the low drink table. He poured himself a liberal tot of Suntory and splashed in the soda. The sound of night traffic from the main Tokyo-Yokohama road came in from some way beyond the surrounding houses, only a few of which now showed doll’s-house squares of yellow light. It was the end of September, but warm. It was ten minutes to midnight. Tiger began talking in a soft voice. ‘In that case, my dear Bondo-san, and since I know you to be a man of honour, except, of course, in matters affecting your country, which this does not, I will tell you quite an interesting story. This is how it is.’ He
got out of his chair and sat down on the tatami and arranged himself in the lotus position. He was obviously more comfortable in this posture. He said, in an expository tone of voice, ‘Ever since the beginning of the era of Meiji, who you will know was the Emperor who fathered the modernization and Westernization of Japan from the beginning of his reign nearly a hundred years ago, there have from time to time been foreigners who have come to this country and settled here. They have for the most part been cranks and scholars, and the European-born American Lafcadio Hearn, who became a Japanese citizen, is a very typical example. In general, they have been tolerated, usually with some amusement. So, perhaps, would be a Japanese who bought a castle in the Highlands of Scotland, and who learned and spoke Gaelic with his neighbours and expressed unusual and often impertinent interest in Scottish folkways. If he went about his researches politely and peaceably, he would be dubbed an amiable eccentric. And so it has been with the Westerners who have settled and spent their lives in Japan, though occasionally, in time of war, as would no doubt be the case with our mythical Japanese in Scotland, they have been regarded as spies and suffered internment and hardship. Now, since the occupation, there have been many such settlers, the great majority of whom, as you can imagine, have been American. The Oriental way of life is particularly attractive to the American who wishes to escape from a culture which, I am sure you will agree, has become, to say the least of it, more and more unattractive except to the lower grades of the human species to whom bad but plentiful food, shiny toys such as the automobile and the television, and the “quick buck”, often dishonestly earned, or earned in exchange for minimal labour or skills, are the summum bonum, if you will allow the sentimental echo from my Oxford education.’
‘I will,’ said Bond. ‘But is this not a picture of the life that is being officially encouraged in your own country?’
Tiger Tanaka’s face darkened perceptibly. ‘For the time being,’ he said with distaste, ‘we are being subjected to what I can best describe as the “Scuola di Coca-Cola”. Baseball, amusement arcades, hot dogs, hideously large bosoms, neon lighting – these are the part of our payment for defeat in battle. They are the tepid tea of the way of life we know under the name of demokorasu. They are a frenzied denial of the official scapegoats for our defeat – a denial of the spirit of the samurai as expressed in the kamikaze, a denial of our ancestors, a denial of our gods. They are a despicable way of life’ – Tiger almost spat the words–‘but fortunately they are also expendable and temporary. They have as much importance in the history of Japan as the life of a dragonfly.’ He paused. ‘But to return to my story. Our American residents are of a sympathetic type on a low level of course. They enjoy the subservience, which I may say is only superficial, of our women. They enjoy the remaining strict patterns of our life – the symmetry, compared with the chaos that reigns in America. They enjoy our simplicity, with its underlying hint of deep meaning, as expressed for instance in the tea ceremony, flower arrangements, NO plays – none of which of course they understand. They also enjoy, because they have no ancestors and probably no family life worth speaking of, our veneration of the old and our worship of the past. For, in their impermanent world, they recognize these as permanent things just as, in their ignorant and childish way, they admire the fictions of the Wild West and other American myths that have become known to them, not through their education, of which they have none, but through television.’
‘This is tough stuff, Tiger. I’ve got a lot of American friends who don’t equate with what you’re saying. Presumably you’re talking of the lower level G.I.s – second-generation Americans who are basically Irish or Germans or Czechs or Poles who probably ought to be working in the fields or coalmines of their countries of origin instead of swaggering around a conquered country under the blessed coverlet of the Stars and Stripes with too much money to spend. I daresay they occasionally marry a Japanese girl and settle down here. But surely they pull up stumps pretty quickly. Our Tommies have done the same thing in Germany. But that’s quite a different thing from the Lafcadio Hearns of the world.’
Tiger Tanaka bowed almost to the ground. ‘Forgive me, Bondo-san. Of course you are right, and I have been diverted from my story down most unworthy paths. I did not ask you here to pour out my innermost repugnance at the occupation of my country. This of course is repugnance against the fact of defeat. I apologize. And of course you are correct. There are many cultured Americans who have taken up residence in this country and who are most valued citizens. You are right to correct me, for I have friends of this nature, in the arts, the sciences, in literature, and they are indeed valued members of the community. I was, let us say, letting off steam. You understand?’
‘Of course, Tiger. My country has not been occupied for many centuries. The imposition of a new culture on an old one is something we have not suffered. I cannot imagine my reactions in the same circumstances. Much the same as yours, I expect. Please go on with your story.’ Bond reached for the saké flask. It stood in a jar of warm water being heated over a slow flame from a charcoal burner. He filled his glass and drank. Tiger Tanaka rocked two or three times on his buttocks and the sides of his feet. He resumed.
‘As I have said, there are a number of foreigners who have taken up residence in Japan and, for the most part, they are inoffensive eccentrics. But there is one such person who entered the country in January of this year who has revealed himself to be an eccentric of the most devilish nature. This man is a monster. You may laugh, Bondo-san, but this man is no less than a fiend in human form.’
‘I have met many bad men in my time, Tiger, and generally they have been slightly mad. Is that the case in this instance?’
‘Very much the reverse. The calculated ingenuity of this man, his understanding of the psychology of my people, show him to be a man of quite outstanding genius. In the opinion of our highest scholars and savants he is a scientific research worker and collector probably unique in the history of the world.’
‘What does he collect?’
‘He collects death.’
7 ....... THE DEATH COLLECTOR
JAMES BOND smiled at this dramatic utterance. ‘A collector of death? You mean he kills people?’
‘No, Bondo-san. It is not as simple as that. He persuades, or rather entices people to kill themselves.’ Tiger paused, the wide expanse of his brow furrowed. ‘No, that also is not being just. Let us just say that he provides an easy and attractive opportunity – a resort – for people to do away with themselves. His present tally, in just under six months, is something over five hundred Japanese.’
‘Why don’t you arrest him, hang him?’
‘Bondo-san, it is not as easy as that. I had better begin at the beginning. In January of this year, there entered the country, quite legally, a gentleman by the name of Doctor Guntram Shatterhand. He was accompanied by Frau Emmy Shatterhand, born de Bedon. They had Swiss passports and the doctor described himself as a horticulturalist and botanist specializing in subtropical species. He carried high references from the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, Kew Gardens, and other authorities, but these were couched in rather nebulous terms. He quickly got in touch with the equivalent authorities in Japan and with experts in the Ministry of Agriculture, and these gentlemen were astonished and delighted to learn that Doctor Shatterhand was prepared to spend no less than one million pounds on establishing an exotic garden or park in this country which he would stock with a priceless collection of rare plants and shrubs from all over the world. These he would import at his own expense in a sufficient state of maturity to allow his park to be planted with the minimum of delay – an extremely expensive procedure if you know anything about horticulture.’
‘I know nothing about it. Like the Texan millionaires who import fully-grown palms and tropical shrubs from Florida?’
‘Exactly. Well, the park was not to be open to the public, but would be freely available for study and research work by authorized Japanese experts. All right. A wonderfu
l offer that was enthusiastically accepted by the government, who, in return, granted the good doctor a ten-year residence permit – a very rare privilege. Meanwhile, as a matter of routine, the Immigration authorities made inquiries about the doctor through my department. Since I have no representative in Switzerland, I referred the matter to our friends of the C.I.A., and in due course he was given complete clearance. It appeared that he was of Swedish origin and was not widely known in Switzerland, where he only possessed the minimum requirement for residential status in the shape of two rooms in an apartment block in Lausanne. But his financial standing with the Union de Banques Suisses was Grade One, which I understand requires you to be a millionaire many times over. Since money is almost the unique status symbol in Switzerland, his clearance by the Swiss was impeccable, though no information could be obtained about his standing as a botanist. Kew and the Jardin des Plantes, on inquiry, referred to him as an enthusiastic amateur who had made valuable contributions to these institutions in the form of tropical and sub-tropical species collected for him by expeditions which he had financed. So! An interesting and financially sound citizen whose harmless pursuits would be of some benefit to Japan. Yes?’
‘Sounds like it.’
‘After travelling round the country in great style, the doctor took a fancy to a semi-ruined castle in Kyūshū, our southern island. The castle was in an extremely remote corner of the coast not far from Fukuoka, the principal prefecture of the island, and in ancient times it had been one of a line of castles facing the Tsushima Straits, the scene of the famous defeat of the Russian navy. These castles were originally designed to repel attacks from the Korean mainland. Most of them had fallen into disrepair, but the one chosen by the doctor was a giant edifice that had been occupied until the last war by a rich and eccentric family of textile millionaires, and its monumental surrounding wall was just what the doctor required for the privacy of his undertaking. An army of builders and decorators moved in. Meanwhile, the plants ordered by the doctor began arriving from all over the world and, with a blanket customs clearance from the Ministry of Agriculture, they were planted in appropriate soils and settings. Here I should mention that an additional reason for the doctor’s choice of site was that the property, which extends for some five hundred acres, is highly volcanic and furnished with many geysers and fumaroles, which are common in Japan. These would provide, all the year round, the temperature needed for the successful propagation of these tropical shrubs, trees and plants from the equatorial zones. The doctor and his wife, who is by the way extremely ugly, moved into the castle with all speed and set about recruiting staff in the neighbourhood who would look after the establishment and its grounds.’ Here Tiger assumed his sorrowful face. ‘And it was at this time that I should not have dismissed as fanciful certain reports that reached me from the Chief of Police at Fukuoka. These were to the effect that the doctor was recruiting his staff uniquely from former members of the Black Dragon Society.’