Licence to Kill

by John Gardner

  ‘It was Leiter, sir. I’ve worked with him before . . .’

  ‘And are not scheduled to work with him in Istanbul, Bond. I’ve been here for almost a day and heard some most unsavoury things. The local police suspect you of mayhem, if not murder. I know Leiter was a friend, but from where I stand it looks as though the whole business has clouded your judgement. You have a job to do and I want it doing. Now. Got it? I want you on a plane out of here tonight and whatever connections you can make to Istanbul as quickly as possible.’ All this was said with the stabbing of M’s forefinger, the body language for killing.

  ‘I’m afraid I haven’t quite finished here, sir.’ Bond was not going to be bullied. The Istanbul business, as he knew only too well, had been on and off the boil for months.

  ‘You are to leave it to the Americans, Bond. It’s their mess. You will let them clear it up.’ M took a pace back. His two bodyguards seemed to have relaxed and were not crowding Bond so closely.

  ‘With respect, sir, the Americans just won’t do anything. You know that Leiter put his life on the line for me many times . . .’

  ‘Enough sentiment,’ M snapped. ‘He knew the risks he was taking. Just as you always know the risks.’

  ‘And his wife?’

  M made a pshawing sound. ‘Do you not realise the other dangers, man? You’re running a private vendetta, and that could compromise Her Majesty’s government. Now, you have an assignment. I expect you to carry out that assignment objectively and professionally as you have many times before.’

  There was a long pause, filled only by a laugh from somewhere out in the street. Then Bond clenched his teeth. This was one of the most difficult decisions he had ever had to make. ‘Then you can have my resignation, sir.’

  ‘This isn’t some country club, Bond. Nor your London club.’

  Bond took a deep breath and waited, staring out his old chief.

  ‘All right,’ M snapped at last. ‘All right. Your resignation. Effective immediately, your licence within the Service, and all that entails, is revoked. I need hardly remind you that you’re still bound by the Official Secrets Act . . .’

  ‘As is every British citizen, sir. That’s sometimes forgotten.’

  M took no notice. ‘I require your personal weapon now.’ He held out his hand.

  After a pause, Bond shrugged and removed his automatic from its holster. ‘I suppose it’s a farewell to arms, then.’ As he said it he felt the bodyguards relax once more. Making as though to hand over the pistol to M, Bond whipped around without warning. The grey-suited man caught the full force of the pistol butt under his chin, while his partner received Bond’s knee in the traditional street-fighter’s target and doubled up with a sharp cry of pain.

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ Bond shouldered past M, jarring him to one side, and vaulted over the veranda railings. It was a longer drop than he had reckoned, but he rolled and came up, pistol at the ready, making his way to the gate. As he reached it, a conch train passed by. The driver/conductor was saying, ‘And on our right we have the most famous house in Key West, if you don’t count the Aububon House and President Truman’s Little White House . . .’

  On the veranda, the bodyguard with a stabbing pain in his groin, had risen, gun out and ready to fire into the garden. M stepped forward and stayed his hand. ‘Too many people – don’t they teach you anything these days?’

  From the veranda, M looked out into the night. ‘God help you, Commander Bond,’ he said aloud, and the bodyguard could not tell if it was anger, sorrow or humour on the old man’s face. Then M turned and walked inside. He could not get out of this place quickly enough, for he too had found it deeply depressing.

  Through binoculars, at a range of two miles, Wavekrest gave the impression of being very much a working ship. She was about 150 feet long, broad in the beam, with a strange overhang on the stern, which also sported a pair of booms, port and starboard. There were small cranes on the booms, and men scurried around. There were obviously divers in the water. Behind the ship, Coy Sol Bay made a beautiful backdrop. A pair of catamarans bobbed nearby, and there were diving flags in the water.

  Bond had watched dawn come up as they rode at anchor about six miles from Coy Sol Bay, and shielded from Wavekrest by the headland. ‘We don’t want to get there until late morning,’ he had told Sharky. ‘It might look a little odd if they all woke up and just found us sitting watching them.’

  ‘Like we would have woke up and found the cops sitting on my boat,’ Sharky grinned.

  After his leap from the veranda of the Hemingway house, Bond had slipped on to the conch train. It was evening and this was probably the last ride any of the tourists would get. The end two coaches were empty, and Bond rode the short distance back to the train offices then had speedily made his way to Sharky’s boat.

  They were a mile out of Key West when the sound of police sirens came floating from the Charter Boat Dock. For an hour or so, both men scanned the night for the blinking lights of a police helicopter, but they had obviously either been called off or called it a day.

  Now it was eleven o’clock on a beautiful calm morning. Sharky had dropped nets over the side and Bond lay hidden near the bows, watching Wavekrest on binoculars supplied by Sharky.

  He scanned the superstructure which did not fit into the rest of the picture of Wavekrest as a marine research ship. Certainly they appeared to have all the technology – radar and sonar dishes turned lazily from behind the bridge – but towards the rear there was an incongruous luxury area. He could pick out very smart cabin doors and what could well be a small pool abaft the main superstructure. Bond also spotted something more sinister. Set for’ard, below the bridge, was a long rack of spear-guns. Most of them were fairly standard, top quality and the kind of things carried by scuba divers. But towards the end were another kind altogether, the type that fired small harpoons, often fitted with small explosive charges.

  He swept the ship again with the binoculars, and this time caught a flash of something else, a sight which made him swing the glasses back towards the first cabin door for’ard – the one that appeared to have a brass plate on it.

  The door had opened, and a pleasant sight emerged. A young, dark girl dressed in a one-piece swimsuit which covered her, both front and back. She carried a towel and beach bag, and walked as though the world was watching her, towards the place where Bond thought he had spotted a pool. He recognised her immediately.

  ‘Well, well, well . . .’ his lips creased into a smile. ‘Look’ee here, me hearties.’

  ‘What you found, James?’ from Sharky on the bridge.

  ‘The girl.’

  ‘What girl?’

  ‘The one I last saw when Sanchez made his visit to Cray Cay. Sanchez’s girlfriend. Miss Galaxy, the flamboyantly-named Lupe Lamora.’

  ‘That mean Sanchez’s aboard?’

  ‘It could very well mean that. Could we move in a little closer?’

  ‘Sure thing, James. Anything. You enjoying yourself?’

  ‘Inordinately, Sharky my old shipmate.’ Indeed, Lupe was a sight for eyes infected by the most severe conjunctivitis. As the fishing boat moved closer, so Bond watched the girl stretch in the sun and begin to cover her body with some kind of lotion. ‘Careful, Lupe,’ Bond muttered. ‘Too much sun can be as harmful as too much tobacco and too much booze.’

  Sharky must have heard him, for he laughed and asked since when had Bond let that kind of thing worry him?

  Bond smiled again and murmured back, ‘You’d be surprised, Shark. I’ve cut down massively on my cigarette intake, and I’ve really never been all that heavy on the drink. Good wines, yes; good whisky, the odd Martini, if it’s made properly. I fear Felix has been libelling my reputation.’

  They had come in quite close now, and Bond saw someone else he recognised, coming down from the bridge. Milton Krest himself. The man who was partly responsible for Della’s death and Felix Leiter’s injuries.

  ‘That bastard Krest’s aboard,’ Bond
whispered loud enough for Sharky to hear above their engine noise, and the whine coming from Wavekrest.

  ‘Then we might be in luck.’ As Sharky said it, so Bond saw one of the men on deck, wearing a wetsuit, shout something to Krest who turned and looked straight at the fishing boat.

  A minute later, Krest had a loudhailer in his hand. His voice echoed across the water, as the hailer was pointed directly at Sharky’s boat. ‘Ahoy! D’you hear there! Fishing vessel stand off. We have divers in the water. I say again. Divers in the water. You are a danger!’

  Bond pressed himself down among the bits of rope and other junk piled in the bows. ‘Better make for the headland, Sharky, and wave nicely, just to please the man.’

  ‘Aye-aye, Cap’n.’ There was a hint of sarcasm in Sharky’s voice.

  ‘Run away, Sharky. Live to fight another day – or I should say another night.’

  When they were out of the immediate vicinity of Wavekrest, Bond shifted his position, crawling back towards the stern and refocusing the glasses. As he did so, there was another flash, low in the water, on the periphery of his vision. He refocused again. There, moving fast, just above the surface, water pluming behind it, was a short, stubby periscope.

  ‘They have a submersible in the water,’ he told Sharky. ‘Powerful and fast by the look of it. Could be an unmanned probe. But I reckon we’ll get the answer to that, and all the other questions, tonight. Do you happen to have any spare tarpaulin aboard?’

  ‘Yep, sure do.’

  ‘Good. Any odd bits of wood, or metal?’

  ‘The whole of this tub’s made of odd bits of wood. Yeah, I got some metal. Two old aerials that broke off in the winds we had last winter. Why?’

  ‘I’m going to a fancy dress party. On board Wavekrest. Give them all a nice surprise. We might find Sanchez into the bargain.’

  ‘A fancy dress party?’ Sharky screwed up his face.

  ‘Why not? Just get behind that headland and anchor. I think this is a job for tonight.’

  There was a long pause. Then Sharky said, ‘Might I ask what you’re going to this fancy dress party as? Long John Silver?’

  ‘You must learn not to be so inquisitive, Sharky. I’ll tell you one thing though. I’ll get first prize in the grand parade.’

  6

  THE JOURNEY OF THE MANTA

  The Manta birostris, usually known simply as the manta ray, is the largest of the manta family. Its name originates from the huge wing-like fins – capes, or mantles – and they come in one size: very large; sometimes seventeen feet long and twenty-two feet wide. They move through the water like massive ocean birds, and though they look both graceful and sinister, the manta ray is not dangerous to man – except for the fact that a swipe from one of the fins can send a diver out of control, doing a great deal of damage.

  This one swam low, almost skimming over the coral and sand in the entrance to Coy Sol Bay. In the darkness, a couple of hours before dawn, it changed direction slightly, seeing pinpoints of light moving towards it, then continued on its stately way, passing four scuba divers, torches lit to guide themselves, heading in the direction from which the manta had come.

  A little further on the manta saw a very bright light, slicing through the water, as though searching. The light held on the huge fish for almost a minute, then began to turn away.

  Aboard Wavekrest the crewmen on duty had spotted the shape in the water. They had the probe, Sentinel, out in a matter of minutes, guided by a specialised operator and attached to Wavekrest by an umbilical cord of electronics and wires. When Sentinel spotted the manta its powerful light sought out the big fish, and the cameras sent back pictures to the mother ship, Wavekrest. It was the periscope of Sentinel that Bond had spotted before he and Sharky had run for the cover of the headland that very morning.

  ‘Only a manta,’ the senior man on the bridge watched the creature on its monitor, fascinated, and a little repulsed by the protruding horns of flesh, like a beetle’s antennae, curving out from its head. The officer in charge of the bridge picked up a telephone and called the probe operator. ‘Bring Sentinel back in,’ he said.

  Sentinel looked like some futuristic model submarine, about four feet in length and three feet high, with an oblong rising higher above the centreline of the fish-shaped hull. The oblong was a watertight compartment which contained the thing’s eyes – its merciless searchlight, cameras and stubby periscope. Behind the oblong compartment, another watertight box slanted back towards the stern. This was obviously some kind of storage container, for its flat top clearly showed hinges and a securing lock.

  Now, it turned away from the giant manta ray and began to move swiftly back towards Wavekrest. James Bond put out his hands and hitched a ride on Sentinel – the name was clearly embossed on the rear, above a U-shaped handle to which he could cling.

  The black tarpaulin, fashioned over a wire and bamboo frame that had been the manta, fell away and drifted to the bottom. Bond and Sharky had worked for several hours to make the manta: bending wire and some of Sharky’s fishing poles; sewing with line, tying down and cutting the tarpaulin, to make James Bond’s ‘fancy dress’. It was a job well done, for when Bond put on a wetsuit and scuba pack the tarpaulin mantle covered him, even allowing him to move his arms, and so imitate the action of the fins.

  ‘Very lifelike,’ Sharky had said. ‘Just hope you don’t meet a male manta down there who takes you for a likely mate.’

  ‘Or an amorous female,’ Bond laughed. He had roughly an hour’s supply of air, and considered he could reach Wavekrest well within that time.

  Now, as he clung to the rear of Sentinel, his fancy-dress party was over, and the real job would be getting on board Wavekrest. If Sanchez was aboard, the security would be very tight, but he had abandoned the camouflage in favour of speed.

  Sentinel began to slow in the water and Bond, still clinging on, allowed his body to sink from view. He could see they were being drawn towards the stern of the ship, and realised why there was such an overhang. A pair of doors, big enough to take at least three men, opened up just below the waterline. Sentinel was gradually being pulled into what was virtually a dock within the mother ship, Wavekrest. He still hung on, remaining under water as the doors closed and the probe started to move upwards, presumably lifted by an electronic winch.

  Sentinel broke surface, but Bond stayed below water and behind the craft. There was plenty of bright light in the dock, and, just above the waterline, he could see the refracted image of a man leaning over the probe, attaching other lines to it. As he came to the rear, the rippling figure bent down, as though to examine something towards the stern.

  Bond prayed the man was working alone. As he bent really low above Bond, so the agent lashed out with his feet, to give an upward momentum, fist clenched and his arm rigid, breaching the water like a small missile.

  More by luck than judgement, he felt his knuckles crunch on to the side of the operator’s jaw, and saw him reel back against the wall of the dock, his head hitting the metal with a nasty thud.

  With as much agility as he could manage in a wetsuit and the heavy scuba pack, Bond pulled himself up on to the narrow metal strip which ran around the probe’s docking area. The man was wearing a boiler suit, and he now looked like a pile of dirty laundry, crumpled in a heap, head sagging forward and one arm outstretched towards Sentinel and the water in which it still floated, hanging on chains.

  The probe operator was alive but out for the count, the force of his head hitting the metal wall having done the real damage. Bond saw that the probe’s control mechanism was still switched on – a box, set in the bulkhead, with an array of dials and two levers, like computer joysticks, with which the speed and direction was remotely controlled. Above the box a monitor flickered, busy with ‘snow’, which meant all picture signals from the probe had been cut off.

  Bond leaned against the bulkhead for a moment, looking around. On the far side, near a companionway ladder leading to the decks above, was a so
lid metal door, inset with thick glass. To one side, tubing connected to a high boxed-in control with a small, lightning-flash sticker and danger sign on it. Above the box was a big dial. A pressure gauge. A divers’ decompression chamber, Bond thought.

  He dragged the sagging body of the probe operator over to the chamber, pulled down on the heavy lever that controlled the door’s locking device, and pushed the body inside. Stacks of neat oblongs, shrink-wrapped in blue plastic, were piled inside the chamber, but he had no time to examine these now. Stripping off his scuba gear, retaining his knife in its sheath attached to a belt, Bond left the chamber and reactivated the door lock. It was time to see if Sanchez was on board.

  Barefoot, and wearing only the dark slacks and T-shirt that had been under his wetsuit, Bond slowly climbed the companionway ladder, leading to the main deck, abaft the main superstructure. The noises were normal for a ship at anchor during the dog watch: the light slapping of water as Wavekrest rode the slight sea; murmurs from for’ard, above, on the bridge. All the companionways would be open on such a warm night, he thought. Riding lights burned, green and red, with a few low deck lights so that crew could find their way around.

  Bond moved to the port side, where he had spotted the luxurious cabin door through the binoculars on Sharky’s fishing boat. In the far corner of his mind there was slight concern about Sharky, for the divers he had seen when disguised as the manta ray had been heading in the general direction of the fishing boat. He scrubbed the worry from his mind. Sharky was big enough to look after himself.

  From where he stood, in the darkness, Bond could make out the lines of a small lifeboat, swung in on its davits. The lifeboat would, he figured, be almost opposite the cabin from which he had seen Lupe – tall, slim, dark and with a figure that would tempt a saint – emerge during the previous morning. If Sanchez was aboard, that would be where Bond would find him.