by John Gardner
A man of habit, Bond did not normally like change, but he had recently altered his soap, shampoo and cologne to Dunhill Blend 30, as he liked their specially masculine tang – and now, after a vigorous towelling, he rubbed the cologne into his body. Then he slipped into his silk travelling Happi-coat to await breakfast, which came accompanied by the local morning papers.
The BMW, or the débris that was left, seemed to be spread across all the front pages, while the headlines proclaimed the bombing to be everything from an atrocious act of urban terrorism to the latest assassination in a criminal gang war that had been sweeping France over the last few weeks. There was little detail, except for the information given by the police, that there had been only one victim, the driver, and that the car had been registered in the name of Conrad Tempel, a German businessman from Freiburg. Herr Tempel was missing from his home, so they presumed he was among the fragments of the motor car.
While reading the story. Bond drank his two large cups of black coffee without sugar, and decided that he would skirt Freiburg later that day, after driving into Germany. He planned to cross the frontier again at Basle. Once in Switzerland, he would make his way down to Lake Maggiore in the Ticino Canton and spend a night in one of the small tourist villages on the Swiss side of the lake. Then he would make the final long run into Italy and the lengthy sweat down the autostradas to Rome. He would spend a few days with the Service’s Resident and his wife, Steve and Tabitha Quinn.
Today’s drive would be less taxing. He did not need to leave until noon, so he had a little time to relax and look around. But first there was the most important job of the day, the telephone call to the Klinik Mozart, to enquire after May.
He dialled 19, the French ‘out’ code, followed by the 61 which would take him into the Austrian system, then the number. Doktor Kirchtum came on the line almost immediately.
‘Good morning, Mr Bond. You are in Belgium now, yes?’
Bond told him politely that he was in France, would be in Switzerland tomorrow, and in Italy the following day.
‘You are burning a lot of the rubber, as they say.’ Kirchtum was a small man, but his voice was loud and resonant. At the clinic he could be heard in a room long before he arrived. The nurses called him das Nebelhorn, the Foghorn.
Bond asked after May.
‘She still does well. She orders us around, which is a good sign of recovery.’ Kirchtum gave a guffaw of laughter. ‘I think the chef is about to cash in his index, as I believe you English say.’
‘Hand in his cards,’ Bond said, smiling to himself. The Herr Doktor, he was sure, made very studied errors in colloquial English. He asked if there was any chance of speaking to the patient, and was told that she was undergoing some treatment at the moment and would not be able to talk on the telephone until later in the day. Bond said he would try to telephone again during his drive through Switzerland, thanked the Herr Doktor, and was about to hang up when Kirchtum stopped him.
‘There is someone here who would like a word with you, Mr Bond. Hold on. I’ll put her through.’
To Bond’s surprise, he heard the voice of M’s PA, Miss Moneypenny, speaking to him with that hint of affection she always reserved for him.
‘James! How lovely to talk to you.’
‘Well, Moneypenny. What on earth are you doing at the Mozart?’
‘I’m on holiday, like you, and spending a few days in Salzburg. I just thought I’d come up and see May. She’s doing very well, James.’ Moneypenny’s voice sounded light and excited.
‘Nice of you to think of her. Be careful what you get up to in Salzburg, though, Moneypenny – all those musical people looking at Mozart’s house and going to concerts . . .’
‘Nowadays all they want is to go and see the locations used in The Sound of Music,’ she replied, laughing.
‘Well, take care all the same, Penny. I’m told those tourists are after only one thing from a girl like you.’
‘Would that you were a tourist, then, James.’
Miss Moneypenny still held a special place in her heart for Bond. After a little more conversation Bond again thanked her for the thoughtful action of visiting May.
His luggage was ready for collection, the windows were open and the sun streamed in. He would take a look around the hotel, check the car, have some more coffee and get on the road. As he went down to the foyer he realised how much he needed a holiday. It had been a hard, tough year, and for the first time Bond wondered if he had made the right decision. Perhaps the short trip to his beloved Royale-les-Eaux would have been a better idea.
A familiar face slid into the periphery of his vision as he crossed the foyer. Bond hesitated, turned and gazed absently into the hotel shop window, the better to examine the reflection of a man sitting near the main reception desk. He gave no sign of having seen Bond, as he sat casually glancing through yesterday’s Herald Tribune. He was short, barely four feet two inches. Neatly and expensively dressed, he had the look of complete confidence characteristic of so many small men. Bond always mistrusted people of short stature, knowing their tendency to over-compensate with ruthless pushiness, as though it were necessary to prove themselves.
He turned away, having made his identification. The face was known well enough to him, with thin, ferret-like features and the same bright, darting eyes as the animal. What, he wondered to himself, was Paul Cordova – or the Rat as he was known in the underworld – doing in Strasbourg? Bond knew there had been a suggestion some years ago that the KGB, posing as a United States Government agency, had used him to do a particularly nasty piece of work in New York.
Paul, the Rat, Cordova was an enforcer – a polite term for a killer – for one of the New York Families, and his photograph and record were on the files of the world’s major police and intelligence departments. It was part of Bond’s job to know faces like this, even though Cordova moved in criminal rather than intelligence circles. But Bond did not think of him as the Rat. To him, the man was the Poison Dwarf. Was his presence in Strasbourg another ‘coincidence’? Bond wondered.
He went down to the parking area, checked the Bentley carefully, and told the man on duty that he would be picking it up within half an hour. He refused to let any of the hotel staff move the car. Indeed, there had been a certain amount of surliness on his arrival because he would not leave the keys at the desk. On his way out, Bond could not fail to notice the low, black, wicked-looking Series 3 Porsche 911 Turbo. The rear plates were mud-spattered, but the Ticino Canton disc showed clearly. Whoever had raced past him on the motorway just before the destruction of the BMW was now at the hotel. Bond’s antennae told him that it was time to get out of Strasbourg. The menacing small cloud had grown a shade larger.
Cordova was not in the hotel foyer when he returned. On reaching his room, Bond put through another call to Transworld Exports in London, again using the scrambler. Even on leave it was his duty to report on the movements of anyone like the Poison Dwarf, particularly so far away from his own patch.
Twenty minutes later, Bond was at the wheel of the Bentley, heading for the German border. He crossed without incident, skirted Freiburg, and by afternoon again crossed frontiers, at Basle. After a few hours’ driving he boarded the car train for the journey through the St Gotthard Pass, and by early evening the Bentley was purring through the streets of Locarno and on to the lakeside road. Bond passed through Ascona, that paradise for artists, both professional and amateur, and on to the small and pleasing village of Brissago.
In spite of the sunlight and breathtaking views of clean Swiss villages, and towering mountains, a sense of impending doom remained with Bond as he travelled south. At first he put it down to the odd events of the previous day and the vaguely disconcerting experience of seeing a New York Mafia hood in Strasbourg. Yet, as he neared Lake Maggiore, he wondered if this mood could be due to a slightly dented pride. He felt distinctly annoyed that Sukie Tempesta had appeared so self-assured, calm and unimpressed by his charm. She could, he th
ought, at least have shown some sort of gratitude. Yet she had hardly smiled at him.
But when the red-brown roofs of the lakeside villages came in sight, Bond began to laugh. Suddenly his gloom lifted and he recognised his own pettiness. He slid a compact disc into the stereo player and a moment later the combination of the view and the great Art Tatum rattling out The Shout banished the darkness, putting him into a happier mood.
Though his favourite part of the country lay around Geneva, Bond also loved this corner of Switzerland that rubbed shoulders with Italy. As a young man he had lazed around the shores of Lake Maggiore, eaten some of the best meals of his life in Locarno, and once, on a hot moonlit night, with the waters off Brissago alive with lamp-lit fishing boats, in the very ordinary little hotel by the pier, had made unforgettable love to an Italian countess.
It was to this hotel, the Mirto du Lac, that he now drove. It was a simple family place, below the church with its arcade of cypresses, and near the pier where the lake steamers put in every hour. The padrone greeted him like an old friend, and Bond was soon ensconced in his room, with the little balcony looking down to the forecourt and landing stage.
Before unpacking Bond dialled the Klinik Mozart. The Herr Direktor was not available and one of the junior doctors told him politely that he could not speak to May because she was resting. There had been a visitor and she was a little tired. For some reason the words did not ring true. There was a slight hesitation in the doctor’s voice which put Bond on the alert. He asked if May was all right, and the doctor assured him that she was perfectly well, just a little tired.
‘This visitor,’ he went on, ‘I believe a Miss Moneypenny . . .’
‘This is correct.’ The doctor was the one who sounded most correct.
‘I don’t suppose you happen to know where she’s staying in Salzburg?’
He did not. ‘I understand she is coming back to see the patient tomorrow,’ he added.
Bond thanked him and said he would call again. By the time he had showered and changed, it was starting to get dark. Across the lake the sunlight gradually left Mount Tamaro, and lights went on along the lakeside. Insects began to flock around the glass globes, and one or two couples took seats at the tables outside.
As Bond left his room to go down to the bar in the corner of the restaurant, a black Series 3 Porsche 911 crept quietly into the forecourt and parked with its nose thrust towards the lake. Its occupant climbed out, locked the car and walked with neat little steps back the way he had driven, up towards the church.
It was some ten minutes later that the people at the tables and in the hotel bar heard the repeated piercing screams. The steady murmur of conversation faded as it became obvious the screams were not part of some lighthearted game. These were shrieks of terror. Several people in the bar started towards the door. Some men outside were already on their feet, others were looking around to see where the noise was coming from. Bond was among those who hurried outside. The first thing he saw was the Porsche. Then a woman, her face white and her hair flying, her mouth stretched wide in a continuous scream, came running down the steps from the churchyard. Her hands kept going to her face, then wringing the air, then clutching her head. She was shouting, ‘Assassinio! Assassinio!’ – Murder – as she pointed back to the churchyard.
Five or six men got up the steps ahead of Bond and clustered round a small bundle lying across the cobbled path, shocked into silence at the sight that confronted them.
Bond moved quietly to the perimeter of the group. Paul, the Rat, Cordova lay on his back, knees drawn up, one arm flung outwards, his head at an angle, almost severed by a single deep slash across the throat. Blood had already spread over the cobbles.
Bond pushed through the gathering crowd and returned to the lakeside. He had never believed in coincidences. He knew that the drownings, the affair at the filling station, the explosion on the motorway, and Cordova’s appearance, here and in France, were linked, and that he was the common denominator. His holiday was shattered. He would have to telephone London, report, and await orders.
Another surprise awaited him as he entered the hotel. Standing by the reception desk, looking as elegant as ever in a short blue-tinged leather outfit, probably by Merenlender, stood Sukie Tempesta.
3
SUKIE
‘James Bond!’ The delight seemed genuine enough, but with beautiful women you could never be sure.
‘In the flesh,’ he said as he moved closer. For the first time he really saw her eyes: large, brown with violet flecks, oval, and set off by naturally long, curling lashes. They were eyes, he thought, that could be the undoing or the making of a man. His own flicked down to the full, firm curve of her breasts under the well-fitting leather. She stuck out her lower lip, to blow hair from her forehead, as she had done the day before.
‘I didn’t expect to see you again.’ Her wide mouth tilted in a warm smile. ‘I’m so glad. I didn’t get a chance to thank you properly yesterday.’ She bobbed a mock curtsey. ‘Mr Bond, I might even owe you my life. Thank you very much. I mean very much.’
He moved to one side of the reception desk so that he could watch her and at the same time keep an eye on the main doors. Instinctively, he felt danger close at hand. Danger by being close to Sukie Tempesta, perhaps.
Outside the commotion was still going on. There were police among the crowd and the sound of sirens floated down from the main street and the church above. Bond knew he needed his back against a wall all the time now. She asked him what was going on, and when he told her she shrugged.
‘It’s commonplace where I spend most of my time. In Rome, murder is a fact of life nowadays, but somehow you don’t expect it here in Switzerland.’
‘It’s commonplace anywhere.’ Bond tried his most charming smile. ‘But what are you doing here, Miss Tempesta – or is it Mrs, or even Signora?’
She wrinkled her nose prettily and raised her eyebrows. ‘Principessa, actually – if we have to be formal.’
Bond lifted an eyebrow. ‘Principessa Tempesta.’ He dropped his head in a formal bow.
‘Sukie,’ she said with a wide smile, the large eyes innocent, yet with a tiny tinge of mockery. ‘You must call me Sukie, Mr Bond. Please.’
‘James.’
‘James.’ And at that moment the padrone came bustling up to complete her booking. As soon as he saw the title on the registration form everything changed to a hand-wringing, bowing comedy, causing Bond to smile wryly.
‘You haven’t yet told me what you’re doing here,’ he continued, over the hotel keeper’s effusions.
‘Could I do that over dinner? At least I owe you that.’
Her hand touched his forearm and he felt the natural exchange of static. Warning bells rang in his head. No chances, he thought, don’t take chances with anybody, particularly anyone you find attractive.
‘Dinner would be very pleasant,’ he replied before once more asking what she was doing here on Lake Maggiore.
‘My little motor car has broken down. There’s something very wrong, according to the garage here – which probably means all they’ll do is change the plugs. But they say it’s going to take days.’
‘And you’re heading for?’
‘Rome, naturally.’ She blew at her hair again.
‘What a happy coincidence.’ Bond gave another bow. ‘If I can be of service . . .’
She hesitated briefly. ‘Oh, I’m sure you can. Shall we meet for dinner down here in half an hour?’
‘I’ll be waiting, Principessa.’
He thought he saw her nose wrinkle and her tongue poke out like a naughty schoolgirl as she turned to follow the padrone to her room.
In the privacy of his own room, Bond telephoned London again, to tell them about Cordova. He had the scrambler on, and as an afterthought asked them to run a check on both the Interpol computer and their own, on the Principessa Sukie Tempesta. He also asked the Duty Officer if they had any information about the BMW’s owner, Herr Tempel of
Freiburg. Nothing yet, he was told, but some material had been sent to M that afternoon.
‘You’ll hear soon enough if it’s important. Have a nice holiday.’
Very droll, thought Bond as he packed away the scrambler, a CC500 which can be used on any telephone in the world and allows only the legitimate receiving party to hear the caller en clair. Each CC500 has to be individually programmed so that eavesdroppers can hear only indecipherable sounds, even if they tap in with a compatible system. It was now standard Service practice for all officers out of the country, on duty or leave, to carry a CC500, and the access codes were altered daily.
There were ten minutes to spare before he was due to meet Sukie, though Bond doubted she would be on time. He washed quickly, rubbing cologne hard into face and hair, and then put on a blue cotton jacket over his shirt. He went quickly downstairs and out to the car. There was still a great deal of police activity in the churchyard, and he could see that a crime team had set up lights where Cordova’s body had been discovered.
Inside the car he waited for the courtesy lights to go out before he pressed the switch on the main panel, revealing the hidden compartment below. He checked the 9mm ASP and buckled its compact holster in place underneath his jacket, then secured the baton holster to his belt. Whatever was going on around him was dangerous. At least two lives had already been lost – probably more – and he did not intend to end up as the next cadaver.
To his surprise, Sukie was already at the bar when he got back into the hotel.
‘Like a dutiful woman, I didn’t order anything while I waited.’
‘I prefer dutiful women.’
Bond slid on to the bar stool next to her, turning it slightly so that he had a clear view of anyone coming through the big glass doors at the front. ‘What will you drink?’