by John Gardner
"That's a no-no, James. But I'm a good teacher, and if you prove to be a diligent pupil, I have ways of rewarding you that you never dreamed of when you were at school. Eight-thirty sharp. Okay?"
"You guarantee results, Proud Percy?"
"I guarantee to teach you, Bond James,' she said with a wicked grin, "and about computer programming as well." Promptly at eight-thirty the next morning, Bond knocked on her door, one arm hidden behind his back.
When she opened up, he thrust out his hand to give her a large rosy apple.
"For the teacher,' he said with a broad smile.
It was the only joke of the day, for Percy Proud proved to be a hard and dedicated taskmaster.
THE Training TOOK a little less than a month and was a tribute to Persephone Proud's teaching skill. Her pupil's capabilities were taxed to the limit. The task had been equivalent to learning a new language and several complicated dialects as well. Indeed, Bond could not remember a time when he had been forced to call so heavily on his mental reserves, to focus his mind, like a burning glass, on the subject at hand.
They quickly established a routine, which seldom varied. For the first few days they started at eight-thirty each morning, but, as the late nights began to take their toll, this was modified to ten o'clock.
They would work until one o'clock, take lunch in a nearby bar, walking there and back, they work again until five.
Each evening at seven they would go down to Le Bar, the Hotel de Paris's famous meeting place, where, it is said, the wrists and necks of the ladies put the Cartier showcases to shame.
If they intended to stay in Monaco for the evening they would dine at the hotel, but they could be seen at L'Oasis in La Napoule when the Cannes Casino took their fancy, sampling the latest tempting dish invented by the master chef, Louis Outhier. Sometimes they would eat a more austere meal at the Negresco in Nice, or even in La Reserve at Beaulieu, or - on occasion - at the modest Le Gallon in the Menton port of Garavan.
The meal was always a prelude to a night at the tables.
Don't go invisible, M had instructed. You are bait, and it would be a mistake to forget it. If they are trawling there, let them catch you.
So the Bentley Mulsanne Turbo slid its silent way along the coast roads each evening, and the tanned, assured Englishman with his willowy elegant American companion, became familiar figures in the gambling landscape of the Cete d'Azur.
Bond played only the wheel, and then conservatively though he tended to double up on bets, plunging heavily on some evenings, coming away thousands to the good on others. Mainly he worked to a system, using big money on the Pair, Impair, Manque and Passe which paid evens, only occasionally changing to a Carr6 - covering four numbers at odds of just over eight to one. Within the first week, he was the equivalent of a few thousand pounds sterling to the good and knew the various casinos were watching with interest. No casino, even with the reputation of those along that once glittering coast, is happy about a regular who plays systematically and wins.
Most nights, Percy and Bond were back at the hotel between three and three-thirty in the morning. Sometimes it was earlier - even one o'clock - giving them a chance to do another hour's work before getting a good sleep before starting all over again.
From time to time, during those weeks, they would not return until dawn. Driving the coast roads with the windows open to breathe the morning air, they feasted their eyes on the greenery of palm and plane trees, the cacti and climbing flowers around the summer homes of the wealthy, their swimming pools fed by spouting marble dolphins. On those occasions they would get back to the hotel in time to smell the first coffee of the day - one of the most satisfying aromas in the world, Bond thought.
The hotel staff considered it all very romantic, the attractive American lady and the wealthy Englishman, so lucky at the tables, and in love. Nobody would have dreamed of disturbing the love-birds.
The truth concerning their enclosed life in Percy's room was far removed from the fantasies of chambermaids and porters, at least for the first couple of weeks.
Percy began by teaching Bond how to flowchart a program - to draw out, in a kind of graph, exactly what he wanted the program to do.
This he mastered in a matter of forty-eight hours, after which the serious business of learning the computer language, Basic, began.
There were extra lessons on the use of graphics and sound.
Towards the end of the second week, Bond started to learn various dialects of Basic, gradually grasping the essentials of further, more complex languages like Machine Code, the high-level Pascal, and Forth.
Even in their spare time, they spoke of little else but the job in hand, though usually with special reference to Jay Autem Holy, and it did not take long for Bond to glean that Holy used his own hybrid program language, which Percy referred to as Holy Code.
"It's one of Jay Autem's main strengths as far as protecting his programs is concerned,' Percy told him over dinner. "He's still using the same system, and the games being produced by Gunfire Simulations are quite inaccessible to other programmers. He always said that if security were necessary - and by God he believed in it the simplest protection is the best. He has an almost perfect little routine at the start of all his games programs that's quite unreadable by anyone who wants to copy or get into the disk. It's exactly the same code he used to put on to his Pentagon work. Anyone trying to copy or list turns the disk into rubbish." Bond insisted on talking about Dr Holy whenever he was given the opportunity, to seek out as much as he could about the man's strengths and weaknesses before meeting him. There could certainly be no better instructor than Percy in this area.
"He looks like a great angry hawk. Well, you've seen the photographs." They were dining in the hotel. "Outward appearances are not to be trusted, though. If I hadn't been on a specific job, I could so easily have fallen for him. In fact, in some ways I did. There were often times when I hoped he'd prove to be straight." She looked pensive, and for a moment it was as though she did not see Bond, or the magnificent dining hall dating back to the Third Empire and undoubtedly the best restaurant in the principality.
"He has amazing powers of concentration. That knack of being able to close off the rest of the world and allow his own work to become the only reality. You know how dangerous that can be." Bond reflected on his own past encounters with the kind of madness that turned men into devils.
It was after this particular dinner, towards the end of the second week, that something happened to change the even tenor of Bond's emotions for some time to come.
"So, are we playing the Salles Privees tonight, or shall we jaunt?" Percy asked.
Bond decided on a trip along the coast to the small casino in Menton, and they left soon afterwards.
The gaming itself did not make it a night to remember, though Bond left with a few thousand francs bulging in his wallet. As they pulled away from the casino to take the road through Roquebrune-CapMartin and so back to Monaco, he caught the lights of a car drawing away directly behind him. He knew there had been a car there, but he had seen nobody getting into it. Immediately he told Percy to tighten her seatbelt.
"Trouble?" she asked, but betrayed no sign of nervousness.
"I'm going to find out, he said as he accelerated, letting the big car glide steadily into the nineties, holding well into the side of the narrow road, praying the police were not around, then thinking perhaps it would be better if they were.
The lights of the car behind remained visible in the driving mirror. When Bond was forced to slow - for that road twists and turns before reaching the long stretch of two-lane highway - it came even closer. It was hard to tell if anything was wrong. Plenty of traffic used this route, though it was late and the season had yet to get under way.
The car tailing them was a white Citron, its distinctive rounded bonnet clearly visible behind the lowered headlights. It stuck like a limpet, a discreet distance behind. Bond wondered whether it was just some young Frenchman o
r Italian wanting to race or show off to a girlfriend. Yet the prickling sensation around the back of his neck told him this was a more sinister challenge.
They came off the two-lane stretch like a rocket, with Bond stabbing at the big footbrake in order to drop speed quickly. From there the road into Monaco was not only narrow but closed in on both sides by rockface or houses leaving little room for manoeuvre. He took the next bend at about sixty miles per hour. Percy made a little audible intake of breath. As he heard her, Bond saw the obstruction.
Another car pulled over to the right, but was still in the Bentley's road space, its hazard lights winking like a dragon's eyes.
To the left and hardly moving, blocking most of the remaining space, was an old and decrepit lorry, wheezing as though about to suffer a complete collapse. Bond yelled for Percy to hang on, jabbed hard at the brake, and slewed the Bentley first left, then right, in an attempt to slalom his way between the vehicles.
Halfway through the right-hand skid, it was plain they would not make it. The Bentley's engine howled as he pushed the lever from automatic drive to low-range, taking the engine down to first.
They were both pressed hard against the restraining straps of their seatbelts as the heavy car came to a halt, the speed dropping from fifty-five almost to zero in the blink of an eye. They were angled across the road, with the oncoming car jamming their right side and the elderly lorry backing slightly on the left. Two men jumped down from the lorry, and another pair materialised from the shadows surrounding the parked car as the white Citron boxed them in neatly from behind.
"Doors!" Bond shouted, slamming his hand against his door lock control, knowing his warning was more of a precaution than anything else, for the central locking system should be in operation. At least three of the men now approaching the Bentley appeared to be armed with axes.
Bond realised as he reached for the hidden pistol compartment catch that his action was only a reflex. If he operated the electric window to use the weapon, they would have a route in. In fact, they could get in anyway, for even a car built like his would eventually collapse under efficiently wielded axes.
The Bentley Mulsanne Turbo is a little over six and a half feet wide. Bond's was not quite at right angles across the road. The Citroen behind, he judged, was within a foot of his rear bumper, but the Bentley's weight would compensate for that. Ahead, the car with its hazard lights blinking was a couple of inches from his door, the lorry some three inches from the bonnet. Directly in front, eight feet or so away, the roadside reached up a sloping rock face. The Bentley's engine had not stalled and still gave out its low grumble.
Holding his foot hard on the brake pedal, Bond adjusted the wheel and, as one of the assailants came abreast of his window, placing himself between the Mulsanne and the parked car, raising both hands to bring down the axe, Bond slid the gear lever into reverse, and lifted his foot smartly off the brake.
The Bentley slid backwards, fast. There was a judder as they hit the Citroen, and a yelp of pain from the man about to try and force entry with his axe. Thrown to one side, he had been crushed between the Bentley and the parked car.
With a quick movement of his right hand, Bond now slid the automatic gear into drive. He had, maybe, an extra six inches to play with. His foot bore gently down on the accelerator. The car eased forward. The screaming attacker on their right was once again crushed as the Bentley straightened up, then gathered speed and headed for the small gap.
The steering on the Mulsanne Turbo is so light and accurate that Bond did not have to wrench at the wheel.
Using a very light touch of his fingers, he eased the Bentley into the narrow gap between lorry and car. More control to the left.
Straight. Hard left. A fraction to the right. Then his foot went down, and they were hurtling forward, passing the front of the car, but with less than an inch to spare between the lorry on the left and the rock face to the right.
Quite suddenly, they were through, back on the empty road downhill into Monaco.
"Hoods?" He could feel Percy quivering beside him though her voice betrayed no sign of fear.
"You mean our kind?" She nodded, her mouth forming a small "Yes."
"Don't think so. Looked like a team out to take our money, and anything else they could grab. There's always been plenty of that along this coast. In the north of England they have a saying: where there's muck there's brass. You can change that to where there's money there's lice.
Bond knew he was lying. It was just possible that the axe men were a group of gangsters. But the set-up had been deadly in its professionalism and sophistication. He would report it as soon as he could get a safe line to London. He told Percy that he would do just that.
"So shall I." They said nothing more until they got to her room.
After that, neither of them would ever be able to say what started it.
"The'y were pros,' she said.
"Yes.
"I don't like it, James. I'm pretty experienced, but I can still get frightened." She moved closer to him, and in a second his arms were around her. Their lips met as though each was trying to breathe fresh energy into the other. Her mouth slid away from him and her cheek lay alongside his neck as she clung on, whispering his name.
So they became lovers, their needs and feelings erupting, adding urgency to every moment of the day and night. With this new mental and physical intermingling came a fresh anxiety, so that they worked harder than ever towards the final goal of preparing Bond to meet Percy's former husband.
By the start of the third week, as he was really beginning to master the intricacies of micro programs, Percy suddenly called a halt.
"I'm going to show you the kind of thing that Jay Autem could well be writing now,' she announced, switching off the Terror Twelve and removing the normal disk drives which Bond had just been using.
In their place she fitted a large, hard-disk laser drive and, powering up the system, booted a program into the computer - "booting' being the technical term for placing a program in the computer's memory.
If Bond had found the computer TEWT fascinating, it was as child's play to the program he was about to witness. What appeared on the screen now was not the standard computer graphics he had become used to, even in their highest form, but genuine pictures, real and in natural colour and texture, like a controllable movie.
"Video,' Percy explained. "A camera interfaced with a hard laser computer disk. Now watch.
She manipulated the joystick, and it was as though they were driving along a city street in heavy traffic.
Certainly the human forms she produced were less realistic than the background against which she made them move, run, fight and take action. But there was a new and almost frightening conviction about this presentation. It was more a simulation than a game.
"I call it Bank Robbery,' she said, and there was no doubt about its effectiveness. By the clever juxtaposition of real film and graphics you could play at robbing a real bank, dealing with every possible emergency that might arise. Bond was more than impressed.
"When I've taught you how to process and copy Jay Autem's work, you'll have the Terror Twelve and three types of drive to take with you, James. Don't say I havn't provided you with all the essential creature comforts." Until later that evening, Bond applied himself to the work, but remained introspective, his mind hovering between the tasks on hand and the appalling potential for evil of the tool that Jay Autem Holy - or indeed anyone with the necessary knowledge - had at his disposal.
It should have been obvious, of course. If there were programs to assist the military in learning strategy and tactics, there had to be the potential there for unscrupulous people to learn the best way to rob, cheat and even kill.
"And you really believe training programs, like the one you showed me today, are being used by criminals?" he asked much later, when they were in bed.
"I'd be very surprised if they weren't." Percy's face was grave.
"Just as I'd be am
azed if Jay Autem were not training criminals, or even terrorists, in his nice Oxfordshire house." She gave a humourless little laugh. "I doubt if it's called Endor by accident.
The Holy Terror has a dark sense of humour." Bond knew that she was almost certainly right. Every two days he received a report from England, via Bill Tanner: a digest of the information coming from the surveillance team that had been set up with exceptional discretion, officers being changed every forty-eight hours, in the village of Nun's Cross. He asked Percy what she thought had actually happened on the night Dr Holy went missing.
"Well, he certainly didn't go by himself. Dear old Rolling Joe Zwingli must have gone with him, and that guy was as mad as a hatter.
They had a file as long as your arm on him at Langley."
"Dealt with the poor pilot, then jumped, I suppose?" Bond was almost speaking to himself. Percy nodded, then shrugged. "And did away with Zwingli when it suited him." During the final days of study, Bond mastered the art of copying all types of program protected by every method Percy knew to be used by Dr Holy. They saved the last two days for themselves.
"You're an enchantress,' Bond told Percy. "I know of nobody else who could have taught me so much in such a short time."
"You've given me a few wrinkles as well, and I don't mean on my face." She put her head back on the pillow.
"Come on, James, darling, one more time, as the jazz men say, then we'll have a fabulous dinner and you can really show me how to play those tables in the Salles Privees." It was midafternoon, and by nine that evening they were seated at the first table in the Casino's most sacred of rooms. Bond's run of luck was still high, though he was now gambling with care, rarely going above his winning stake, which had quadrupled since his arrival, and not betting on the rash outside chance, high-win options.
During the three hours they played that night he was down, at one point, to 40,000 francs. But the wheel started to run in his favour, and eventually, by midnight, the stake had increased to 300,000 francs.