by Ian Fleming
Bond opened the white envelope and broke the seal of the blue envelope which it contained.
There was a page of blue typewritten foolscap paper with no address and no signature. Bond recognized the extra-large type used in M.’s personal communications.
Bond waved the messenger to a chair and sat down at the writing desk opposite the window.
‘Washington’, said the memorandum, ‘reports that “Rufus B. Saye” is an alias for Jack Spang, a suspected gangster who was mentioned in the Kefauver Report but who has no criminal record. He is, however, twin brother to Seraffimo Spang and joint controller of the “Spangled Mob” which operates widely in the United States. The brothers Spang bought control of the House of Diamonds five years ago “as an investment”, and nothing unfavourable is known about this business, which appears to be perfectly legitimate.
‘The brothers also own a “wire service” which serves off-the-course bookmakers in Nevada and California, and is, therefore, illegal. The name of this is the “Sure Fire Wire Service”. They also own the Tiara Hotel in Las Vegas, and this is the headquarters of Seraffimo Spang and also, to benefit from the Nevada tax laws, the company offices of the House of Diamonds.
‘Washington adds that the Spangled Mob is interested in other illegal activities such as narcotics and organized prostitution, and these lines are handled from New York by Michael (Shady) Tree who has five previous convictions for various offences. The gang has branch headquarters in Miami, Detroit and Chicago.
‘Washington describes the Spangled Mob as one of the most powerful gangs in the United States, with excellent “protection” in State and Federal governments and with the police. With the Cleveland Outfit and the Detroit “Purple” gang, the Spangled Mob has top classification.
‘Our interest in these matters has not been divulged to Washington, but in the event that your inquiries lead you into dangerous contact with this gang, you will report at once and be withdrawn from the case which will then be handed over to the F.B.I.
‘This is an order.
‘The return of this document in a sealed envelope will acknowledge your receipt of this order.’
There was no signature. Bond ran his eyes down the page again, folded it, and placed it in one of the Ritz envelopes.
He got up and handed the envelope to the messenger.
‘Thanks very much,’ he said. ‘Can you find your own way downstairs?’
‘Yes, thank you, Sir,’ said the messenger. He went to the door and opened it. ‘Good night, Sir.’
‘Goodnight.’
The door closed quietly. Bond walked across the room to the window and looked out over Green Park.
For a moment he had a clear vision of the spare, elderly figure sitting back in his chair in the quiet office.
Give the case to the F.B.I.? Bond knew M. meant it, but he also knew how bitter it would be for M. to have to ask Edgar Hoover to take a case over from the Secret Service and pick Britain’s chestnuts out of the fire.
The operative words in the memorandum were ‘dangerous contact’. What constituted ‘dangerous contact’ would be a matter for Bond to decide. Compared with some of the opposition he had been up against, these hoodlums surely wouldn’t count for much. Or would they? Bond suddenly remembered the chunky, quartz-like face of ‘Rufus B. Saye’. Well, at any rate it could do no harm to try and get a look at this brother with the exotic name. Seraffimo. The name of a night-club waiter or an ice-cream vendor. But these people were like that. Cheap and theatrical.
Bond shrugged his shoulders. He glanced at his watch. 6.25. He looked round the room. Everything was ready. On an impulse, he put his right hand under his coat and drew the .25 Beretta automatic with the skeleton grip out of the chamois leather holster that hung just below his left armpit. It was the new gun M. had given him ‘as a memento’ after his last assignment, with a note in M.’s green ink that had said, ‘You may need this’.
Bond walked over to the bed, snapped out the magazine, and pumped the single round in the chamber out on the bedspread. He worked the action several times and sensed the tension on the trigger-spring as he squeezed and fired the empty gun. He pulled back the breech and verified that there was no dust round the pin which he had spent so many hours filing to a point, and he ran his hand down the blue barrel from the tip of which he had personally sawn the blunt foresight. Then he snapped the spare round back into the magazine, and the magazine into the taped butt of the thin gun, pumped the action for a last time, put up the safe and slipped the gun back under his coat.
The telephone rang. ‘Your car’s here, Sir.’
Bond put down the receiver. So here it was. The ‘off’. He walked thoughtfully over to the window and looked out again across the green trees. He felt a slight emptiness in the stomach, a sudden pang at cutting the painter with those green trees that were London in high summer, and a loneliness at the thought of the big building in Regent’s Park, the fortress which would now be out of reach except to a call for help which he knew it would not be in him to make.
There was a knock on the door and, when a page came in for his bags, Bond followed him out of the room and along the corridor, and his mind was swept clean of everything except what waited at the mouth of the pipeline that lay open for him outside the swing-doors of the Ritz Hotel.
It was a black Armstrong Siddeley Sapphire with red trade plates. ‘You’d like to sit up front,’ said the uniformed chauffeur. It was not an invitation. Bond’s two bags and his golf clubs were put in the back. He settled himself comfortably and, as they turned into Piccadilly, he examined the face of the driver. All he could see was a hard, anonymous profile under a peaked cap. The eyes were concealed behind black sun goggles. The hands that expertly used the wheel and the gears wore leather gloves.
‘Just relax and enjoy the ride, Mister.’ The accent was Brooklyn. ‘Don’t bother with conversation. Makes me nervous.’
Bond smiled and said nothing. He did as he was told. Forty, he thought. Twelve stone. Five feet ten. Expert driver. Very familiar with London traffic. No smell of tobacco. Expensive shoes. Neat dresser. No five o’clock shadow. Query shaves twice a day with electric razor.
After the roundabout at the end of the Great West Road, the driver pulled in to the side. He opened the glove compartment and carefully removed six new Dunlop 65’s in their black wrapping paper, and with the seals intact. Leaving the engine idling in neutral, he got out of the front seat and opened the rear door. Bond looked over his shoulder and watched the man unstrap the ball-pocket on his golf bag and, one by one, carefully add the six new balls to the miscellaneous old and new ones the pocket already contained. Then, without a word, the man climbed back into the front seat and the drive continued.
At London Airport, Bond unconcernedly went through the luggage and ticket routine, bought himself the Evening Standard, allowing his arm, as he put down his pennies, to brush against an attractive blonde in a tan travelling suit who was idly turning the pages of a magazine and, accompanied by the driver, followed his luggage through to the customs.
‘Just your personal effects, Sir?’
‘Yes.’
‘And how much English money have you, Sir?’
‘About three pounds and some silver.’
‘Thank you, Sir.’ The blue chalk made a scribble on the three bags, and the porter picked up the suitcase and clubs and loaded them on a trolley. ‘Follow the yellow light to Immigration, Sir,’ he said and wheeled the trolley off towards the loading bay.
The driver gave Bond an ironical salute. The smudge of two eyes met his for a moment through the dark glass of the goggles and the lips narrowed in a thin smile. ‘Good night, Sir. Pleasant trip.’
‘Thank you, my man,’ said Bond cheerfully, and had the satisfaction of seeing the smile vanish as the driver turned and walked quickly away.
Bond picked up his attaché case, showed his passport to a pleasant, fresh-faced young man who ticked his name off the passenger list, and walked th
rough into the Departure Lounge. Just behind him, he heard Tiffany Case’s low voice say ‘Thank you’ to the fresh-faced young man, and a moment later she also came into the lounge and chose a seat between him and the door. Bond smiled to himself. It was where he would have chosen to sit if he had been tailing someone who might have second thoughts.
Bond picked up his Evening Standard and casually examined the other passengers over the top of it.
The plane would be nearly full (Bond had been too late to get a sleeping berth) and he was relieved to see that among the forty people in the lounge there was not a face he recognized. Some miscellaneous English, two of the usual nuns who, Bond reflected, seemed always to be flying the Atlantic in the summer – Lourdes, perhaps – some nondescript Americans, mostly of the businessman type, two babies in arms to keep the passengers from sleeping, and a handful of indeterminate Europeans. A typical load, decided Bond, while admitting that if two of their number, himself and Tiffany Case, had their secrets, there was no reason why many of these dull people should not also be bound on strange missions.
Bond felt that he was being watched, but it was only the blank gaze of two of the passengers he had put down as American businessmen. Their eyes shifted casually away, and one of them, a man with a young face but prematurely white hair, said something to the other and they both got up, picked up their Stetsons, which, although it was summer, were encased in waterproof covers, and walked over to the bar. Bond heard them order double brandies and water, and the second man, who was pale and fat, took a bottle of pills out of his pocket and swallowed one down with his brandy. Dramamine, guessed Bond. The man would be a bad traveller.
The B.O.A.C. flight dispatcher was close to Bond. She picked up the telephone – to Flight Control, Bond supposed – and said ‘I have forty passengers in the Final Lounge’. She waited for the okay and then put the telephone back and picked up the microphone.
‘Final Lounge?’ Cheerful start to flying the Atlantic, reflected Bond, and then they were all walking across the tarmac and up into the big Boeing and, with a burst of oil and metanol smoke, the engines fired one by one. The chief steward announced over the loudspeaker that the next stop would be Shannon, where they would dine, and that the flying time would be one hour and fifty minutes, and the great double-decker Stratocruiser rolled slowly out to the East-West runway. The aircraft trembled against its brakes as the Captain revved the four engines, one at a time, up to take-off speed, and through his window Bond watched the wing flaps being tested. Then the great plane turned slowly towards the setting sun, there was a jerk as the brakes were released and the grass on either side of the runway flattened as, gathering speed, the Monarch hurtled down the two miles of stressed concrete and rose into the west, aiming ultimately for another little strip of concrete carpet on the other side of the world.
Bond lit a cigarette and was settling himself with his book when the back of the reclining seat on the left of the pair in front of him was lowered sharply towards him. It was one of the two American businessmen, the fat one, lying slumped down with his safety belt still fastened round his stomach. His face was green and sweating. He held a brief-case clutched across his chest and Bond could read the name on the visiting card inserted in the leather label tag. It said ‘Mr W. Winter’ and below, in neat red ink capitals, was written ‘MY BLOOD GROUP IS F’.
Poor brute, thought Bond. He’s terrified. He knows the plane is going to crash. He just hopes the men who pull him out of the wreckage will give him the right blood transfusion. To him this plane is nothing but a giant tube – full of anonymous deadweight, supported in the air by a handful of sparking plugs, and guided to its destination by a scrap of electricity. He has no faith in it, and no faith in safety statistics. He is suffering the same fears he had as a small child – the fear of noise and the fear of falling. He won’t even dare to go to the lavatory for fear he’ll put his foot through the floor of the plane when he stands up.
A silhouette broke the rays of the evening sun that filled the cabin and Bond glanced away from the man. It was Tiffany Case. She walked past him to the stairs leading down to the cocktail lounge on the lower deck and disappeared. Bond would have liked to follow her. He shrugged his shoulders and waited for the steward to wheel round the tray of cocktails and the caviar and smoked salmon canapés. He turned again to his book and read a page without understanding a single word. He put the girl out of his mind and started the page again.
Bond had read a quarter of the book when he felt his ears begin to block as the plane started its fifty-mile descent towards the western coastline of Ireland. ‘Fasten your seat-belts. No smoking’ and there was the green and white searchlight of Shannon and the red and gold of the flare-path rushing towards them, and then the brilliant blue of the ground-lights between which the Stratocruiser trundled towards the unloading bay. Steak and champagne for dinner, and the wonderful goblet of hot coffee laced with Irish whisky and topped with half an inch of thick cream. A glance at the junk in the airport shops, the ‘Irish Horn Rosaries’, the ‘Bog Oak Irish Harp’, and the ‘Brass Leprechauns’, all at $1.50, and the ghastly ‘Irish Musical Cottage’ at $4, the furry, unwearable tweeds and the dainty Irish linen doilies and cocktail napkins. And then the Irish rigmarole coming over the loudspeaker in which only the words ‘B.O.A.C.’ and ‘New York’ were comprehensible, the translation into English, the last look at Europe, and they were climbing to 15,000 feet and heading for their next contact with the surface of the world, the radio beacons on the weather ships ‘Jig’ and ‘Charlie’, marking time around their compass points somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic.
Bond slept well and awoke only as they were approaching the southern shores of Nova Scotia. He went forward to the washroom and shaved, and gargled away the taste of a night of pressurized air, and then he went back to his seat between the lines of crumpled, stirring passengers and had his usual moment of exhilaration as the sun came up over the rim of the world and bathed the cabin in blood.
Slowly, with the dawn, the plane came alive. Twenty thousand feet below, the houses began to show like grains of sugar spilt across a brown carpet. Nothing moved on the earth’s surface except a thin worm of smoke from a train, the straight white feather of a fishing boat’s wake across an inlet, and the glint of chromium from a toy motor car caught in the sun; but Bond could almost see the sleeping humps under the bedclothes beginning to stir and, where there was a wisp of smoke rising into the still morning air, he could smell the coffee brewing in the kitchens.
Breakfast came, that inappropriate assortment of foods that B.O.A.C. advertise as ‘An English country house breakfast’, and the chief steward came round with the U.S. customs forms – Form No. 6063 of the Treasury Department – and Bond read the small print: ‘failure to declare any article or any wilfully false statement ... fine or imprisonment or both’ and wrote ‘Personal effects’ and cheerfully signed the lie.
And then there were three hours when the plane hung dead-steady in the middle of the world, and only the patches of bright sunshine swaying slowly a few inches up and down the walls of the cabin gave a sense of motion. But at last there was the great sprawl of Boston below them, and then the bold pattern of a clover-leaf on the New Jersey Turnpike, and Bond’s ears began to block with the slow descent towards the pall of haze that was the suburbs of New York. There was the hiss and sickly smell of the insecticide bomb, the shrill hydraulic whine of the air-brakes and the landing-wheels being lowered, the dip of the plane’s nose, the tearing bump of the tyres on the runway, the ugly roar as the screws were reversed to slow the plane for the entrance bay, the rumbling progress over the tired grass plain towards the tarmac apron, the clang of the hatch being opened, and they were there.
7 ....... ‘SHADY’ TREE
THE CUSTOMS officer, a paunchy good-living man with dark sweat marks at the armpits of his grey uniform shirt, sauntered lazily over from the Supervisor’s desk to where Bond stood, his three pieces of luggage in front of him,
under the letter B. Next door, under C, the girl took a packet of Parliaments out of her bag and put a cigarette between her lips. Bond heard several impatient clicks at the lighter, and the sharper snap as she put the lighter back in her bag and closed the fastening. Bond felt aware of her watchfulness. He wished that her name began with Z so that she would not be so close. Zarathustra? Zacharias? Zophany ...?
‘Mr Bond?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is this your signature?’
‘Yes.’
‘Just your personal effects?’
‘Yes, that’s all.’
‘Okay, Mr Bond.’ The man tore a customs stamp out of his book and pasted it on the suitcase. He did the same for the attaché case. He came to the golf clubs. He paused with the stamp book in his hand. He looked up at Bond.
‘What d’ya shoot, Mr Bond?’
Bond had a moment of blackout.
‘They’re golf clubs.’
‘Sure,’ said the man patiently. ‘But what d’ya shoot? What d’ya go round in?’
Bond could have kicked himself for forgetting the Americanism. ‘Oh, in the middle eighties, I guess.’
‘Never broken a hundred in my life,’ said the customs officer. He gummed a blessed stamp on the side of the bag a few inches away from the richest haul of contraband that had ever been missed at Idlewild.
‘Have a good vacation, Mr Bond.’
‘Thanks,’ said Bond. He beckoned a porter and followed his bags across to the last hurdle, the Inspector at the door. There was no pause. The man bent over, searched for the stamps, overstamped them and waved him through.
‘Mr Bond?’
It was a tall, hatchet-faced man with mud-coloured hair and mean eyes. He was wearing dark brown slacks and a coffee-coloured shirt.
‘I have a car for you.’ As he turned and led the way out into the hot early morning sun, Bond noticed a square bulge in his hip-pocket. It was about the shape of a small-calibre automatic. Typical, thought Bond. Mike Hammer routine. These American gangsters were too obvious. They had read too many horror comics and seen too many films.