Bond 09 - Thunderball

by Ian Fleming

  Bond looked candidly into her eyes. He said reassuringly, ‘Of course. I was just trying to get more comfortable. I heaved about and I do remember that my hand hit something rather hard. I suppose it must have been the lever. Then I don’t remember any more. I must have been awfully lucky you came along so quickly.’

  She handed him the fresh drink. ‘Well, it’s all over now. And thank heavens nothing’s badly strained. Another two days of treatment and you’ll be right as rain.’ She paused. She looked rather embarrassed. ‘Oh, and Mr Wain asks if you could possibly keep all this, all this trouble, to yourself. He doesn’t want the other patients to get worried.’

  I should think not, thought Bond. He could see the headlines. ‘PATIENT TORN NEARLY LIMB FROM LIMB AT NATURE CLINIC. RACK MACHINE GOES BERSERK. MINISTRY OF HEALTH STEPS IN.’ He said, ‘Of course I won’t say anything. It was my fault anyway.’ He finished his drink, handed back the glass, and cautiously lay back on the bed. He said, ‘That was marvellous. Now how about some more of the mink treatment. And by the way. Will you marry me? You’re the only girl I’ve ever met who knows how to treat a man properly.’

  She laughed. ‘Don’t be silly. And turn over on your face. It’s your back that needs treatment.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  Two days later, Bond was once more back in the half-world of the nature cure. The routine of the early morning glass of hot water, the orange, carefully sliced into symmetrical pigs by some ingenious machine wielded, no doubt, by the wardress in charge of diets, then the treatments, the hot soup, the siesta, and the blank, aimless walk or bus ride to the nearest tea-shop for the priceless strength-giving cups of tea laced with brown sugar. Bond loathed and despised tea, that flat, soft, time-wasting opium of the masses, but on his empty stomach, and in his febrile state, the sugary brew acted almost as an intoxicant. Three cups he reckoned had the effect, not of hard liquor, but of just about half a bottle of champagne in the outside world, in real life. He got to know them all, these dainty opium dens – Rose Cottage, which he avoided after the woman charged him extra for emptying the sugar bowl; The Thatched Barn, which amused him because it was a real den of iniquity – large plates of sugar cakes put on one’s table, the piercing temptation of the smell of hot scones – the Transport Café, where the Indian tea was black and strong and the lorry drivers brought in a smell of sweat and petrol and the great world (Bond found that all his senses, particularly his palate and nose, had miraculously become sharpened), and a dozen other cottagey, raftery nooks where elderly couples with Ford Populars and Morris Minors talked in muted tones about children called Len and Ron and Pearl and Ethel, and ate in small mouthfuls with the points of their teeth and made not a sound with the tea things. It was all a world whose ghastly daintiness and propriety would normally have sickened him. Now, empty, weak, drained of all the things that belonged to his tough, fast, basically dirty life, through banting, he had somehow regained some of the innocence and purity of childhood. In this frame of mind, the naivety and total lack of savour, surprise, excitement, of the dimity world of the Nice-Cup-of-Tea, of the Home-made Cakes, and the One-Lump-or-Two, were perfectly acceptable.

  And the extraordinary thing was that he could not remember when he had felt so well – not strong, but without any aches and pains, clear of eye and skin, sleeping ten hours a day and, above all, without that nagging sense of morning guilt that one is slowly wrecking one’s body. It was really quite disturbing. Was his personality changing? Was he losing his edge, his point, his identity? Was he losing the vices that were so much part of his ruthless, cruel, fundamentally tough character? Who was he in process of becoming? A soft, dreaming, kindly idealist who would naturally leave the Service and become instead a prison visitor, interest himself in youth clubs, march with the H-bomb marchers, eat nut cutlets, try and change the world for the better?

  James Bond would have been more worried, as day by day the H-cure drew his teeth, if it had not been for three obsessions which belonged to his former life and which would not leave him – a passionate longing for a large dish of Spaghetti Bolognese containing plenty of chopped garlic and accompanied by a whole bottle of the cheapest, rawest Chianti (bulk for his empty stomach and sharp tastes for his starved palate), an overwhelming desire for the strong, smooth body of Patricia Fearing, and a deadly concentration on ways and means to wring the guts out of Count Lippe.

  The first two would have to wait, though tantalizing schemes for consuming both dishes on the day of his release from Shrublands occupied much of his mind. So far as Count Lippe was concerned, work had started on the project from the moment Bond took up again the routine of the cure.

  With the cold intensity he would have employed against an enemy agent, say in a hotel in Stockholm or Lisbon during the war, James Bond set about spying on the other man. He became garrulous and inquisitive, chatting with Patricia Fearing about the various routines at Shrublands. ‘But when do the staff find time to have lunch?’ ‘That man Lippe looks very fit. Oh, he’s worried about his waist-line! Aren’t the electric blanket baths good for that? No, I haven’t seen the Turkish Bath Cabinet. Must have a look at it some time.’ And to his masseur: ‘Haven’t seen that big chap about lately, Count something – Ripper? Hipper? Oh yes, Lippe. Oh, noon every day? I think I must try and get that time as well. Nice being clear for the rest of the day. And I’d like to have a spell in the Turkish Bath thing when you’ve finished the massage. Need a good sweat.’ Innocently, fragment by fragment, James Bond built up a plan of operations – a plan that would leave him and Lippe alone among the machinery of the sound-proof treatment rooms.

  For there would be no other opportunity. Count Lippe kept to his room in the main building until his treatment time at noon. In the afternoons he swished away in the violet Bentley – to Bournemouth it seemed, where he had ‘business’. The night porter let him in around eleven each night. One afternoon – in the siesta hour – Bond slipped the Yale lock on Count Lippe’s room with a straight piece of plastic cut off a child’s aeroplane he had bought for the purpose in Washington. He went over the room meticulously and drew a blank. All he learned – from the clothes – was that the Count was a much travelled man – shirts from Charvet, ties from Tripler, Dior, and Hardy Amies, shoes from Peel, and raw silk pyjamas from Hong Kong. The dark red morocco suitcase from Mark Cross might have contained secrets, and Bond eyed the silk linings and toyed with the Count’s Wilkinson razor.

  But no! Better that revenge, if it could be contrived, should come out of a clear sky.

  That same afternoon, drinking his treacly tea, Bond scraped together the meagre scraps of his knowledge of Count Lippe. He was about thirty, attractive to women, and physically, to judge from the naked body Bond had seen, very strong. His blood would be Portuguese with a dash of Chinaman and he gave the appearance of wealth. What did he do? What was his profession? At first glance Bond would have put him down as a tough maquereau from the Ritz bar in Paris, the Palace at St Moritz, the Carlton at Cannes – good at backgammon, polo, water-skiing, but with the yellow streak of the man who lives on women. But Lippe had heard Bond making inquiries about him and that had been enough for an act of violence – an inspired act that he had carried out swiftly and coolly when he finished his treatment with the Fearing girl and knew, from her remark, that Bond would be alone on the Traction table. The act of violence might only have been designed to warn, but equally, since Lippe could only guess at the effect of a 200-lb. pull on the spine, it might have been designed to kill. Why? Who was this man who had so much to hide? And what were his secrets? Bond poured the last of his tea on to a mound of brown sugar. One thing was certain – the secrets were big ones.

  Bond never seriously considered telling Headquarters about Lippe and what he had done to Bond. The whole thing, against the background of Shrublands, was so unlikely and so utterly ridiculous. And somehow Bond, the man of action and resource, came out of it all as something of a ninny. Weakened by a diet of hot water and vegetable s
oup, the ace of the Secret Service had been tied to some kind of a rack and then a man had come along and just pulled a lever up a few notches and reduced the hero of a hundred combats to a quivering jelly! No! There was only one solution – a private solution, man to man. Later perhaps, to satisfy his curiosity, it might be amusing to put through a good Trace on Count Lippe – with S.I.S. Records, with the C.I.D., with the Hong Kong Station. But for the time being Bond would stay quiet, keep out of Count Lippe’s way, and plan meticulously for just the right kind of pay-off.

  By the time the fourteenth day, the last day, came, Bond had it all fixed – the time, the place, and the method.

  At ten o’clock, Mr Joshua Wain received Bond for his final check-up. When Bond came into the consulting room, Mr Wain was standing by the open window doing deep-breathing exercises. With a final thorough exhalation through the nostrils he turned to greet Bond with an Ah! Bisto! expression on his healthily flushed face. His smile was elastic with good-fellowship. ‘And how’s the world treating you, Mr Bond? No ill effects from that unhappy little accident? No. Quite so. The body is a most remarkable piece of mechanism. Extraordinary powers of recovery. Now then, shirt off, please, and we’ll see what Shrublands has managed to do for you.’

  Ten minutes later, Bond, blood pressure down to 132/84, weight reduced by ten pounds, osteopathic lesions gone, clear of eye and tongue, was on his way down to the basement rooms for his final treatment.

  As usual, it was clammily quiet and neutral-smelling in the white rooms and corridors. From the separate cubicles there came an occasional soft exchange between patient and staff, and, in the background, intermittent plumbing noises. The steady whir of the ventilation system created the impression of the deep innards of a liner in a dead calm. It was nearly twelve thirty. Bond lay face down on the massage table and listened for the authoritative voice and the quick slap of the naked feet of his prey. The door at the end of the corridor sighed open and sighed shut again. ‘Morning, Beresford. All ready for me? Make it good and hot today. Last treatment. Three more ounces to lose. Right?’

  ‘Very good, sir.’ The gym shoes of the chief attendant, followed by the slapping feet, came down the corridor outside the plastic curtain of the massage room and on to the end room of all, the electric Turkish bath. The door sighed shut and a few minutes later sighed again as the attendant, having installed Count Lippe, came back down the corridor. Twenty minutes went by. Twenty-five. Bond rolled off the table. ‘Well, thanks, Sam. You’ve done me a power of good. I’ll be back to see you again one of these days I expect. I’ll just go along and have a final salt rub and a Sitz bath. You cut along to your carrot cutlets. Don’t worry about me. I’ll let myself out when I’ve finished.’ Bond wrapped a towel round his waist and moved off down the corridor. There was a flurry of movement and voices as the attendants got rid of their patients and made their way through the staff door for the luncheon break. The last patient, a reformed drunk, called back from the entrance, ‘See you later, Irrigator!’ Somebody laughed. Now the petty-officer voice of Beresford sounded down the corridor, making certain that everything was shipshape: ‘Windows, Bill? Okay. Your next is Mr Dunbar at two sharp. Len, tell the laundry we shall need more towels after lunch. Ted…Ted. You there, Ted? Well, then, Sam, look after Count Lippe, would you, Turkish bath.’

  Bond had listened to this routine for a whole week, noting the men that cut minutes off their duty and got off early to lunch, noting the ones that stayed to do their full share of the last chores. Now, from the open door of the empty shower room, he called back, in Sam’s deep voice, ‘Okay, Mr Beresford,’ and waited for the crisp squeak of the gym shoes on the linoleum. There it was! The brief pause half way down the corridor and then the double sigh as the staff door opened and shut. Now there was dead silence save for the hum of the fans. The treatment rooms were empty. Now there was only James Bond and Count Lippe.

  Bond waited a moment and then came out of the shower room and softly opened the door to the Turkish bath. He had had one session in the place, just to get the geography clear in his mind, and the scene was exactly as he remembered.

  It was a white cubicle treatment-room like all the others, but in this one the only object was a big cream metal and plastic box about five feet tall by four feet square. It was closed on all sides but the top. The front of the big cabinet was hinged to allow a patient to climb in and sit inside and there was a hole in the top with a foam rubber support for the nape of the neck and the chin, through which the patient’s head emerged. The rest of his body was exposed to the heat from many rows of naked electric bulbs inside the cabinet and the degree of heat was thermostatically controlled by a dial at the back of the cabinet. It was a simple sweat-box, designed, as Bond had noticed on his previous visit to the room, by the Medikalischer Maschinenbau G.m.b.H., 44 Franziskanerstrasse, Ulm, Bavaria.

  The cabinet faced away from the door. At the hiss of the hydraulic fastener, Count Lippe said angrily, ‘Goddammit, Beresford. Let me out of this thing. I’m sweating like a pig.’

  ‘You said you wanted it hot, sir.’ Bond’s amiable voice was a good approximation to the chief attendant’s.

  ‘Don’t argue, goddammit. Let me out of here.’

  ‘I don’t think you quite realize the value of heat in the H-Cure, sir. Heat resolves many of the toxins in the blood-stream and for the matter of that in the muscle tissue also. A patient suffering from your condition of pronounced toxaemia will find much benefit from the heat treatment.’ Bond found the H-lingo rattling quite easily off the tongue. He was not worried about the consequences to Beresford. He would have the solid alibi of luncheon in the staff canteen.

  ‘Don’t give me that crap. I tell you, let me out of here.’

  Bond examined the dial on the back of the machine. The needle stood at 120. What should he give the man? The dial ran up to 200 degrees. That much might roast him alive. This was only to be a punishment, not a murder. Perhaps 180 would be a just retribution. Bond clicked the knob up to 180. He said: ‘I think just half an hour of real heat will do you the world of good, sir.’ Bond dropped the sham voice. He added sharply, ‘And if you catch fire you can sue.’

  The dripping head tried to turn, failed. Bond moved towards the door. Count Lippe now had a new voice, controlled but desperate. He said woodenly, concealing the knowledge and the hate, ‘Give you a thousand pounds and we’re quits.’ He heard the hiss of the opening door. ‘Ten thousand. All right then, fifty.’

  Bond closed the door firmly behind him and walked quickly down the corridor to put on his clothes and get out. Behind him, deeply muffled, came the first shout for help. Bond closed his ears. There was nothing that a painful week in hospital and plenty of Gentian Violet or Tannic Acid jelly wouldn’t cure. But it did cross his mind that a man who could offer a bribe of fifty thousand pounds must be either very rich or have some very urgent reason for needing freedom of movement. It was surely too much to pay just for avoidance of pain.

  James Bond was right. The outcome of this rather childish trial of strength between two extremely tough and ruthless men, in the bizarre surroundings of a nature clinic in Sussex, was to upset, if only in a minute fashion, the exactly-timed machinery of a plot that was about to shake the governments of the Western world.

  5 ....... SPECTRE

  THE BOULEVARD Haussmann, in the VIIIth and IXth Arrondissements, stretches from the Rue du Faubourg St Honoré to the Opéra. It is very long and very dull, but it is perhaps the solidest street in the whole of Paris. Not the richest – the Avenue d’Iéna has that distinction – but rich people are not necessarily solid people and too many of the landlords and tenants in the Avenue d’Iéna have names ending in ‘escu’, ‘ovitch’, ‘ski’, and ‘stein’, and these are sometimes not the endings of respectable names. Moreover, the Avenue d’Iéna is almost entirely residential. The occasional discreet brass plate giving the name of a holding company in Liechtenstein or in the Bahamas or the Canton de Vaud in Switzerland are there for tax
purposes only – the cover names for private family fortunes seeking alleviation from the punitive burden of the Revenue, or, more briefly, tax-dodging. The Boulevard Haussmann is not like that. The massive, turn-of-the-century, bastard Second Empire buildings in heavily ornamented brick and stucco are the ‘sièges’, the seats, of important businesses. Here are the head offices of the gros industriels from Lille, Lyons, Bordeaux, Clermont Ferrand, the ‘locaux’ of the grosses légumes, the ‘big vegetables’ in cotton, artificial silk, coal, wine, steel, and shipping. If, among them, there are some fly-by-nights concealing a lack of serious capital – des fonds sérieux – behind a good address, it would only be fair to admit that such men of paper exist also behind the even solider frontages of Lombard and Wall Streets.

  It is appropriate that among this extremely respectable company of tenants, suitably diversified by a couple of churches, a small museum and the French Shakespeare Society, you should also find the headquarters of charitable organizations. At No. 136 bis, for instance, a discreetly glittering brass plate says ‘F.I.R.C.O.’ and, underneath, ‘Fraternité Internationale de la Résistance Contre l’Oppression’. If you were interested in this organization, either as an idealist or because you were a salesman of, say, office furniture, and you pressed the very clean porcelain bell button, the door would in due course be opened by an entirely typical French concierge. If your business was serious or obviously well-meaning, the concierge would show you across a rather dusty hall to tall, bogus Directoire double doors adjoining the over-ornamented cage of a shaky-looking lift. Inside the doors you would be greeted by exactly what you had expected to see – a large dingy room needing a fresh coat of its café-au-lait paint, in which half a dozen men sat at cheap desks and typed or wrote amidst the usual accoutrements of a busy organization – in and out baskets, telephones, in this case the old-fashioned standard ones that are typical of such an office in this part of Paris, and dark green metal filing cabinets in which drawers stand open. If you were observant of small details, you might register that all the men were of approximately the same age-group, between thirty and forty, and that in an office where you would have expected to find women doing the secretarial work, there were none.