Win, Lose or Die

by John Gardner

‘You’re a pleasure to work for, Ms da Ricci.’

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘Do I get a raise in salary?’

  ‘I think you already got one, Mr Bond.’

  They barely made it to the bedroom. Outside, the sun had come up. Franco was working on the main gates, fitting a new lock and the electronic sensors that would scream an alarm should anyone tamper with them again. In the rear bedroom of the Villa Capricciani there were low moans and little screams of joy.

  In a room high in the main grey, fortress-like villa, the other hood called Umberto stood back in the shadows and scanned the garden and the rocky skyline above them. If anything were going to happen, it would probably come from that direction and not the main gates. A frontal attack had proved dangerous. He wondered if his new boss, the girl who was very much in charge, and whom he had met for the first time a couple of days ago, was vulnerable to a frontal attack. He guessed she was – but not from the hired help.

  Far away, in Plymouth, three men had spent the night indulging in the sins of the flesh. They had drunk a great deal, and one of them had been with a tall black girl who had done things to, and for, him that had, until now, only been fantasies.

  ‘It’s time for the deadline,’ Harry said to the Petty Officer they called Blackie.

  ‘Time to sell your soul and save all of us,’ added Bill.

  ‘Oh, Gawd.’ Blackie had been putting off the evil day, stalling for time and knowing time was a commodity he had run out of long ago. It was Christmas Eve and he had the rail-ticket in his pocket to return to the wife and kids for two weeks’ leave.

  ‘It’s serious.’ Bill’s face was set, engraved with concern.

  ‘It was serious when we first told you. Now we’re all in a mess . . .’

  ‘I know; I know . . .’

  ‘All debts settled and one hundred thousand pictures of Her Majesty just for you, Blackie.’

  ‘Yeah. I just . . .’

  ‘Look, Blackie,’ Bill had wrapped his large strong fingers around the Petty Officer’s wrist, making the man wince with pain. ‘Look, it’s not as though you were being asked to steal anything. These people need a few hours, that’s all.’

  ‘I know . . .’ he paused, his bleary eyes moving slowly around the room. ‘I know, and I ain’t got no option, have I?’

  ‘Not really.’ Harry was quiet, soft-spoken and persuasive.

  The Petty Officer nodded, ‘Okay, I’ll do it.’

  ‘That’s a solemn promise?’ from Bill.

  ‘On my mother’s grave.’

  ‘They’ll give you time, place and the equipment before you leave. If it happens, you’ll get the money and the slate’s wiped clean. If you chicken out . . . well, I wouldn’t fancy your chances. Harry and me? Well, we can always do a runner. Tough, but we could do it – just. You have nowhere to hide, Blackie, and they’d come looking, fast as a swarm of hornets and a lot more painful.’

  ‘I said I’d do it.’ The Petty Officer was very convincing. But, then, he was not lying. As far as he was concerned, all other options had run out.

  A 9mm Browning automatic pistol is not the easiest thing to conceal about your person. This is why the ‘close protection’ experts advise smaller, lighter weapons which will do just the same job. Beatrice carried her pistol in a shoulder-bag; Bond used the shoulder-holster, adjusted so that the pistol lay directly behind his left shoulder blade.

  Franco and Umberto, who had both stayed well out of sight, were left to look after matters while Bond and Beatrice went off into Forio on their shopping expedition. On this Saturday the little town, with its narrow streets and limited parking facilities, strictly controlled by the local polizia, was crowded with people doing their last odds and ends of Christmas shopping.

  They found a place to park legally and Beatrice, who had made a list of food and other good things that would allow them a pleasant, somewhat gluttonous day, led the way to the nearest market where she shuffled Bond from aisle to aisle, knowing instinctively where the various items were to be found. They filled one large wire trolley, with a mind of its own, in a matter of twenty minutes and Bond noticed, to his pleasure, that Beatrice hardly looked at the shelves at all. She would murmur where he should go next, and reel off the list of required items, but her eyes were alertly stabbing around the crowded market, and she kept one hand inside her shoulder-bag.

  Bond felt that he had found the compleat pro in Ms Beatrice Maria da Ricci. Everything she did adhered to best security practice, and she appeared to have eyes in the back of her head. At one point, while facing away from him, she murmured, ‘No, James. Not the Belgian ones. Take the French, they’re a few lire more, but one hundred per cent better.’ Or, again, in similar circumstances, ‘The bottles, not the tins. Once you open a tin you have to use the whole lot. The bottles will seal again.’

  They even bought a small tree and some gaudy baubles. ‘A Christmas to remember.’ She smiled at him, the black eyes inviting him to return immediately to the delights of the morning. It was the one time during the expedition that she actually looked at Bond.

  They loaded their purchases into the car, and Bond insisted on going on his own to make a secret transaction. She did not like it, but agreed to stand guard in front of the shop – a jeweller’s in which he bought an exquisite gold clasp, shaped like a scutum – the old oblong or oval shield used by the early Roman army – with a large diamond centre, and an edging of smaller diamonds. It cost a ransom, but they took Amex and he would pay for it with his private money. The little jeweller smiled a lot and gift-wrapped the piece with exaggerated care. It was only when he was back on the street again that Bond realised it had been a long time since he had bought such an extravagant gift for a woman: particularly one he had known for less than twenty-four hours. Could it really happen like this? he wondered. Women had come easily to him, but his own expertise, and the exigencies of his service life, had usually held him back from any deep involvement. Had he really broken the rule of years?

  He drove, with Beatrice giving instructions. They finally reached an intersection where the traffic was blocked, held at bay or waved on by a tall, unhappy-looking police-officer.

  Beatrice had her pistol on her lap, hand wound round the butt, her eyes moving everywhere at once, darting constantly to the vanity mirror on the sun-visor which she had pulled down.

  Slowly the traffic crept towards the white stop-marker until it was the little Fiat’s turn. Bond had his eyes on the cop, waiting for the quick hand-signal that would wave him on, when suddenly he sensed other eyes on him to the right and directly ahead. He moved and saw, with a sense of shock, a girl turn away quickly and start to walk at speed with her back to him. But he recognised her in that one fast glance, and the movement of her body, as she stepped along the pavement.

  There was a parping of motor horns, and Beatrice testily snapped, ‘He’s waving you on, James. For heaven’s sake, move.’

  He slid the clutch out and negotiated the turn, the traffic cop making a gesture with his eyes and head which indicated that this driver ought not to be allowed on the road at all.

  He drove back to the Villa Capricciani with a troubled mind, wondering what in heaven’s name First Officer Clover Pennington, of the RNAS Yeovilton was doing on Ischia: particularly what she was doing in the town of Forio, not five miles from where he was staying.

  8

  ALL THE OTHER DEMONS

  For a few seconds, James Bond wondered if it was guilt gnawing at his conscience. He had certainly shown, at the least, a sexual attraction to Clover, but this had gone cold when she proved to be an uncertain security risk. There had been something not quite right about First Officer Pennington. Now her geographic proximity to him triggered anxiety. He would tell Beatrice when the moment was right, later.

  The gates were open at the Villa Capricciani, and a short, stocky young man stood near the steps. He wore jeans and a T-shirt which proclaimed The Man Who Dies With The Tost Toys Wins. His hair was golden-bleac
hed by the, now departed, summer sun, and the muscles visible on his arms were toned to an awesome strength. Take off the T-shirt, Bond thought, and his body would give an impression of sixteenth-century armour, complete with breastplate, vambraces and pauldrons. Even from this distance, you could mark him down as a trained minder. ‘Franco,’ Beatrice explained.

  He started to unload the car while Beatrice spoke in a soft murmur to Franco, who eventually came down, closed the gates, locked them and, with a conspiratorial wink, handed a key to Bond. He also pointed to a tiny switch set in the wall, all but covered by ivy. In almost tedious dumb show, Franco activated the switch, indicating that if anyone fiddled with the gates or lock, the ‘screamers’ would begin wailing.

  Then they all went up to the villa, and Franco disappeared through the rear french windows on his way back to the big villa. He looked like a man who would not need to use the doors, but could walk straight through the walls, pausing only to shake brick-dust from his hair.

  Leaving Beatrice to deal with the food and drink, Bond went down the steps again, locked the car, made it secure, and returned, locking the inner gate behind him.

  ‘They’re not going to like it.’ Beatrice came to him, holding him gently in her arms and pressing herself against his body.

  ‘They’re not going to get it.’ Bond smiled down at her.

  She sighed. ‘Oh, James, be your age.’

  ‘I usually am.’ He was genuinely surprised to have used such an old schoolboy piece of repartee. Beatrice seemed to have wrought an unexpected change in him.

  ‘Listen to me. Poor old Franco and Umberto will have to spend this Christmas as watchers. The Rottweilers will prowl the grounds, and I’m not going to let you, my darling James, out of my sight, unless the bloody BAST people have another go.’

  ‘Eat your hearts out, Franco and Umberto.’

  ‘Mmmm,’ she nodded. ‘I’m going up to the big villa now. Give them instructions. Make an obligatory ’phone call. Then I’ll be back and the celebrations can commence.’ She gave him a gentle kiss on the cheek, and he felt that his face had never yet been kissed like this. Beatrice had the art of kissing a cheek, as though it were his mouth, or even his deepest secret being. Kissing, he considered, was a lost art in this crumbling, shock-ridden world. Beatrice had rediscovered it, and now practised the craft in a way that had been hidden for centuries. He stood on the rear terrace, listening to her footsteps on the stone path, wondering what had happened to him. He had never been one for quick, serious decisions of the heart. Quick, serious decisions were for operational service matters, not for women. Yet this girl had certainly worked a powerful and potent magic. He felt, after one day, that he had known her for most of his life.

  It was untypical, and it worried him, for, in this short space of time, Beatrice had started to command his heart. Bond’s discipline was such that this rarely happened. Even the courting of his now dead wife had taken time. Apart from that one instance, he was one of life’s natural playboy bachelors as far as women were concerned: one who had so often lived by the three Fs – Find, Fornicate and Forget. It was the safest way in his job, for basically he believed Field Officers should only be married if they needed the cover. It was a cold and clinical approach, but the right one. Beatrice was turning it upside down.

  He thought about this dilemma for some time, then remembered there was a new code word to collect, so he turned back into the villa and dialled London.

  The number in England picked up, as usual, on the third ring. ‘Predator,’ said Bond. ‘Day two.’

  ‘Dragontooth,’ the voice was clear from the distant line. ‘Repeat. Dragontooth.’

  ‘Acknowledge.’ Bond put down the receiver. So, some of the intelligentsia who burrowed away in the Regent’s Park office were trying to be clever. In his extreme youth, Bond had read much, and his memory was almost photographic. He called back the lines now, from Dante’s Inferno from The Divine Comedy.

  Front and centre here, Grizzly and Hellkin . . .

  You too, Deaddog . . .

  Curlybeard, take charge of a squad of ten.

  Take Grafter and Dragontooth along with you.

  Pigfusk, Catclaw, Cramper and Crazyred.

  They were some of the named demons with forked claws and rakes who tended, and goaded, the damned in their cauldron of boiling pitch. So, those at headquarters were now deeply influenced by the strange mystic concept of the Brotherhood of Anarchy and Secret Terrorism – BAST, the three-headed monster who rode on a viper.

  ‘Dragontooth, James.’ He had not even heard her come in through the french windows behind him. She had been as silent as a cat. ‘Correct. Dragontooth,’ he said, thinking, ‘Cat’. Could the Pennington girl be the Cat of BAST – Saphii Boudai?

  ‘Dragontooth,’ he said again, giving Beatrice a sad smile. Behind the smile his brain worked at the equation. Saphii Boudai’s file showed her as a dedicated terrorist from her teens. The British authorities had been close to her on two occasions, yet she remained, like the other members of the BAST hierarchy, a ghost; an insubstantial, if deadly, figure with no true form or shape, of which there was no real description. The Pennington girl had a history. A good family. He even knew her uncle, Sir Arthur Pennington, Master of Pennington Nab in the West Country. Her cousins had both been close to him at one time or another. The background was impeccable. Or was it? Another thought struck him.

  ‘What’s wrong, James?’ Beatrice had come to him, wrapping her arms around his neck and looking into his face with her hypnotic black eyes. The eyes seemed almost to weaken him, and their bottomless darkness drew him into her brain so that all he could see was a possible future with her: a future free from danger and responsibility – except to her.

  Bond drew back, holding Beatrice at arm’s length. ‘I saw someone in Forio. Someone who shouldn’t be there.’

  Her face underwent a change. Just a slight twitch of concern, but enough to reveal that this delightful girl had the tough inner resources required by people in their mutual trade. She drew him over to the couch and started to question him – her queries all aimed at the heart of the problem, the reason he was here, in the villa on Ischia. It was plain that, as well as everything else, Beatrice was a skilled interrogator.

  He told her everything, in its chronological sequence. First Officer Pennington at Yeovilton, her lax sense of security, and the fact that she was to be in charge of a section of Wrens on draft to Invincible – something very much out of the norm for the Royal Navy.

  ‘And she knew of your drafting?’ Beatrice asked.

  ‘To where?’ he countered, still in control of his own sense of need-to-know, the central pin of all security matters.

  ‘Invincible, of course. James, you don’t think they would have put me in charge of this assignment without a complete briefing. She knew you were to be in Invincible for Landsea ’89 – the Pennington girl, I mean?’

  He nodded. ‘Yes, and she didn’t seem to think it was something she had to keep quiet about. Clover had access to all the draft orders. It was like giving classified information to a gossip columnist. She had as much idea of security, and keeping her mouth shut, as a town crier.’

  ‘Mmmm.’ Beatrice frowned, and Bond thought she even looked attractive when her face became re-patterned with anxiety. ‘Look, James,’ she laid a hand on his thigh, which seemed to pass a current of signals to alert his most basic physical needs. ‘Look, I have a secure radio-link back to the big villa. This is something I should report now, before it’s too late. It won’t take long. Are you up to some menial chores, like doing vegetables for tomorrow’s dinner?’

  Bond rarely bothered himself with the preparation of food. For years it had always been something others did for you. But he simply nodded, and went into the little kitchen while Beatrice left the Villa Capricciani, hurrying, her face reflecting the fact that she considered Clover Pennington’s presence on the island, and nearby, to be something of grave concern.

  In the kit
chen, Bond began to prepare the vegetables, smiling wryly and thinking how M would love to see him now. He would not have been surprised to learn that M had given Beatrice Maria da Ricci instructions to ‘Put Bond in his place.’ He could hear the Old Man telling her that 007 was sometimes a shade too conscious of his class for his own good. ‘Get him to do some physical jobs, like swabbing the decks of that villa.’ It was the kind of devilment in which M would revel.

  In England that Christmas Eve, M was down at Quarterdeck, but not at ease. An extra secure telephone link had been installed so that he could get information concerning Bond and his situation within seconds of it coming in to Headquarters.

  Though M was naturally a solitary person, he did have relatives: a daughter, now married to an academic who worked on incomprehensible and obscure pieces of European history at Cambridge. They had provided M with two grandchildren, a boy and girl, whom he adored and spoiled in, for him, a most uncharacteristic manner.

  The tree was trimmed, Mrs Davison had everything ready, and, during the previous week, M had gone, with her husband, on a spending-spree, most of the purchases being extravagant playthings for the grandchildren. At Christmas, M seemed to turn into the reformed Scrooge – in fact, part of the Quarterdeck Christmas ritual was a reading from Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. But, this year, M did not seem to have his heart in the preparations. He sat in his study, unmoved by the Nine Lessons and Carols, broadcast live each year from King’s College, Cambridge. This, in itself, was also unusual, for, in spite of his crusty, sharp manner, and weather-beaten features, Christmas usually brought out a drop of sentiment in M.

  His hand seemed to leap to the telephone a second before it rang, and he answered with a crisp, ‘M.’

  Bill Tanner was at the other secure end. ‘Something’s come through, sir.’

  M nodded, not even speaking into the instrument. There was a brief pause, then Tanner continued, ‘Today we’ve had two contacts. The usual change of cipher. Then another one. A Flash.’