Bond - 27 - Never send flowers

by John Gardner

  `Why didn't I have you named in the Press release, Mr Bond? Well, I could have been mistaken. We got the photofit from a waiter who says he saw you with the victim. He says you arrived a little before six.

  He claims to have actually spoken with you, telling you that they had finished serving tea. You replied that you were to meet someone, and he says he saw you join the victim. Eye witnesses are often wrong.

  The description could well have been inaccurate: photofits often are, as I suspect you already know." `So you gave me the benefit of the doubt?" Again Daily gave his most charming smile. `No.

  No, not really. I took the precaution of telephoning your Chief when I saw the likeness, and he had a little story for me.

  `So you know I was there?" `I do. I also know that you went there to see somebody else, and that's quite important, because the someone else looked very much like the victim.

  `You know who she was the person I was meeting?" `Oh, yes. In fact, I've worked with Carmel on a number of occasions, and, while the victim is superficially like her, facially really, she was not at all like her in the flesh so to speak. Yet..

  `She could have been mistaken for His Chantry. .

  `In the dusk with the light behind her, to quote W. S. Gilbert.

  `Oh, I do think you educated policemen are wonderful." Bond gave him a crooked smile. `But you think there was a mistake?" `No doubt in my mind. Once the balloon went up, and I'd spoken with your guy'nor, we removed the other lady from the hotel." His eyes strayed to the plainclothes man by the door. `I think you can leave us now, Meyer." A friendly nod and a wink.

  The cop shrugged, but left, closing the door behind him.

  `In fact, I have a message from your boss.. `I don't think he'd appreciate being called either guy'nor or boss...

  `No? Well, he's not going to hear me, is he? He says that His C is safe and that your Mr Grant is also safe, contained, in fact, under house arrest.

  Strikes me that the ladies and gentlemen of the Security Service are in the midst of a crisis." `Does it now?" The last thing he wanted to do was to get drawn into any loose talk concerning MIS. You never knew with policemen.

  After a pause that went on a shade too long, Daily said that M also wanted him to telephone.

  `He asked me to tell you that he had removed surveillance on you and would you call him. Been a naughty boy, have we, Mr Bond?" `Not so as you'd notice,' he said icily.

  He telephoned M from a public coin box, or at least that was what they used to be called before the proliferation of public telephones that only took credit cards, or British Telecom calling cards.

  `Just wanted you to know that our sisters have got themselves an almost entirely new Anti-terrorist Section,' M growled.

  `About time, if all I've heard is true." `Mmm. Well, I fear it is. The former Head of Department has been guilty of much folly, and many a cover-up. The work got done, but he had to watch his back, and he'll now be doing it from an easy chair on half pension-if that. `You think someone was out to get His C as well as the other late lamented lady, sir?" `Could be. I've spoken to their Director General, and the lady you saw last night is in very safe hands. Now, I will be in touch, just make the most of this enforced rest.

  `Of course, sir." He spent almost two hours getting to his final destination, running the back doubles and practising every anti-surveillance trick in the book.

  no doubt, had been keeping an eye on him and he had a healthy respect for that; but, with all that seemed to be going on, he wanted to be certain that nobody else was hard on his heels.

  It was almost two-thirty in the afternoon by the time he turned into the pleasant little street off the King's Road, with its plane trees dusty from the August he at.

  Inside his apartment, he rapidly did all his personal security checks. Nobody appeared to be watching the house, though he still could not rule out a listening device or telephone bug. With an anti-bug scanner, loaned to him some time ago by Ann Reilly, assistant to the armourer who provided all hardware for the service, he scoured every inch of wall and floor. Only when he was ninety-nine percent certain that there were no unauthorized electronics in the house, spiked through the walls, or hidden manually by some expert cut-and-run professional, did he telephone the Inn on the Park.

  Fredericka picked up without answering.

  `It's me. `Who's me?" `James. `How do I know it's James?" `You have a small mole high on the inside of your left thigh. That good enough?" `Yes. Go on." `Have you heard from your Alpine friend yet?" `They brought in a verdict of murder by person or persons unknown or at least their version of that verdict." `And the frineral?" `Tomorrow.

  She left instructions apparently.

  Two o'clock tomorrow afternoon at a crematorium in Bournemouth.

  It appears that she liked that area. Do we go?" `Yes, but first I must give you some instructions.

  He told her to check out of the hotel and come over to his flat.

  `Not the easy way, it would be best if you ran some interference for yourself. I'm pretty sure that I'm clean, but anyone could have been waiting for me where you are now. If so, they'll pick you up, so give them a run for their money." `Will do." She broke the contact. Very professional, he considered. Then he wondered why he had asked her to come to him. He seldom invited ladies to the apartment. It was one of those things he very rarely did, and even then never had he let them stay overnight.

  Fredericka arrived just after six-thirty, having come via Heathrow Airport and then the Underground into central London, and again another runaround involving three taxis. For the first time, a woman slept in the apartment, and it proved to be one of those world champion nights about which most people only fantasize.

  The crematorium was about as personal as a public convenience.

  Bond had the feeling that it was worked on the production line principle, with clergy of many denominations doing shifts at the numerous chapels.

  Apart from Fredericka and Bond, only three other people turned up for the service, which the clergyman read as though he was bored stiff with the entire thing. At last, the coffin slid away and the little velvet curtains closed with only a slight whirr of machinery.

  Two of the other mourners had MIS written all over them, if only because they had tried to look completely normal a man and a woman.

  The woman wept as she left the chapel of rest, and the man did nothing to comfort her. The other person was a man of around forty, dressed in a well-tailored suit. He showed no emotion and walked quickly away from the place as soon as it was all done.

  At the door of the chapel, the undertaker told them that there had been a few floral tributes, though the deceased had asked for none.

  `It was all a bit of a rush, I'm afraid,' he said, looking at Bond as though he would know exactly what was meant.

  He pointed the way to the garden area where Laura March's flowers were lying in a rather pathetic little row, and they went to take a quick look.

  There was a medium-sized wreath with a card that simply said, `From the Director and Members of the Board with tender memories." Bond thought it reeked of officialdom. There was another from the aunt in Birmingham; a third `To Laura from her many friends at the office. You will always be remembered." At the end of this little row, one single flower lay like a boutonniere, the stem wrapped in crisp Cellophane, and the flower backed by green fronds. The flower itself was enough to cause interest. It was a rose, but a rose that neither Fredericka nor Bond had ever seen before: a luminous white, the colour intense in its depth, and the most extraordinary thing about the bloom was that each of the petals had a tip, blood red and almost symmetrical. It was as though someone had taken a very beautiful white rose and carefully painted the spots of blood identically at the end of each petal. So odd was the effect that Bond even leaned forward and brushed it with his fingertips to make certain it was real, and not some reproduced piece of plastic. It was real enough, and he bent again to read the card.

  The card was plain. No f
lorist's address or little picture: just a plain oblong of white, with a carefully written message. The copperplate writing reminded him of M for a moment, then the words suddenly seemed very familiar. He had read them and, it struck him that he had also seen a description of this same kind of rose at least four times before. The message was very simple `This is how it must end. Goodbye.

  He stood, looking at the single flower, more eloquent than any wreath or spray, then he turned to Fredericka. `I think we should go, my dear. I have something to show you back in London. After that it might be the right time for us to visit Germany." `The Rhineland?" Bond nodded, took her arm and walked briskly back to his car. He knew that he had found in this extraordinary rose a tangible link between the death of Laura March and the four assassinations of that one week of deaths.

  CHAPTER NINE

  RICHARD'S HIMSELF AGAIN

  The road had been hewn out of the rock, twisting and turning so that one minute they were gazing down an almost sheer drop into the greeny blue waters of the Rhine, and at others they seemed to be pressed against great cuttings, the rough walls of natural stone rising on either side of them. They came upon their first view of the castle suddenly, following a long gentle bend and on to a kilometer of straight road, the Schloss Drache appearing below them like some kind of trick, an illusion, for the castle seemed also to have been cut from the rock itself: a Mount Rushmore in which people lived.

  `Bigger than the one at Disneyland,' Bond said quietly, and Fredericka reached out, putting her hand over his for a second, as the late summer afternoon sun hit one of the turrets, glancing off the windows, flashing light from the castle to the river, as though someone within had directed a prismatic beam directly on to the water.

  The legends of the Rhine passed quickly through Bond's mind-the legend of the nymph, Lorelei; or the Rhinemaidens, and their hoard of gold.

  Time seemed to stand still, and it was hard to believe that only forty-eight hours ago they had driven away from Laura March's lonely funeral on England's south coast, as though the hounds of hell were on their heels.

  They made it back to the King's Road in record time, the white Saab 9000 CD Turbo whining through the New Forest and then on to the M3

  motorway, Bond breaking the speed limit whenever it seemed safe, driving hard and using every ounce of skill he could muster. The hybrid rose with its strange message ran in circles around his brain, stirring another memory, only half-caught and almost out of reach.

  The moment they walked into the apartment he retrieved his briefcase from its hiding place in the compartment behind the wainscot in his bedroom, opened it and removed the files, which had so conveniently found their way into his safe back at the office. He carried the folders through to the sitting-room and began to pore over them.

  Fredericka took her cue and disappeared into the kitchen, making tea, hot and very strong, which Bond sipped as he went through the flimsy pages, searching, making notes here and there. He found what he wanted in the files on Generale Claudio Carrousso `S assassination, and then, again, in the papers referring to Archie Shaw. The other two the Russian, Pavel Gruskochev, and the CIA man, Mark Fish required further checking.

  He called an anonymous number in Paris, and waited while his contact went through the more recent information they had on the Gruskochev killing. Bond nodded and smiled, making a note on his file as the data was read quietly to him from an office not far from the Champs Elyse'es.

  He then called Washington, went through a little game of telephone tag, and finally tracked down the man he wanted, who was dining out, in Arlington, Virginia, with a friend from the Pentagon. The man in Washington asked how quickly he needed the information, and was told yesterday. `If it really is that important, I'll go out to Langley and call you back,' he said, adding that Bond was about the only person in the world he would do something like this for. An hour later the telephone rang and Bond again smiled to himself as he made notes, the telephone pressed hard against his ear.

  `Just what I wanted to hear,' he told the caller. `I owe you one.

  `And I'll collect. The Washington contact closed the line, and drove back to the house in Arlington where his friend from the Pentagon waited patiently she was a G3, twenty-eight years old and with the greatest legs this side of New York.

  Bond then dialled a number in Chalfont St Giles, greeting an old friend he had not seen for almost two years. After the usual pleasantries, the talk turned to the growing of hybrid roses. The conversation lasted for almost thirty minutes.

  Only when he had finished talking on the phone, did he call Fredericka from where she was reading a paperback in the bedroom.

  `So, Sherlock,' she dropped gracefully on to the big leather couch. `Have you found the secret of life and death?" `Enough to tie a few knots together, and enough to put at least one name in the frame, as they say on those TV police dramas. Look. ` He came over and sat close beside her, the four files on his lap.

  `When it comes to murder or assassination, one of the standard procedures as you must know is the general surveillance of those who come to the victim's funeral. There were people from both my service and the Security Service there today. You saw the MIS couple, my guys were not so obvious, but they were around. Again, as you know, the job is to identify everyone who comes to pay their respects, and, when it's all over, someone else usually goes through the so-called floral tributes.

  Notes are kept regarding the messages, and then the sources are tracked down if necessary. That's straightforward stuff as far as the police, and the security and intelligence services are concerned.

  `Of course. Yes, it's standard." `You saw that hybrid rose. Odd.

  I've never seen anything quite so perfect. The petals all seemed identical, and the blood-red tips could have been painted on, they were so symmetrical. Then there was the message which would strike the dimmest probationary detective as odd.

  "`This is the way it must end. Goodbye,"' she muttered, almost under her breath. `Sure, a murderer's message, perhaps? Or a bit of sentiment..

  `No, you were right the first time. Those four assassinations which took place last week, just before Laura was killed. -`Yes?" `Would it surprise you that the same hybrid rose, with the same message, turned up at each of the funerals? The General in Rome; our MP, here in London; old Pavel in Paris, and the CIA man, Fish, in Washington. In the case of the MP, Shaw, and the Russian, it was made clear that there should be no flowers, yet the rose turned up at each interment..

  `And the same message? Exactly the same message?" `Exactly. Word for word, and nobody has been able to trace the source. They simply appeared at the graveside, or the crematoriums, as if by magic.

  There is one tiny clue and it doesn't mean much.

  In Paris, the undertaker saw a young boy thirteen or fourteen years old hanging around the graveside before the service. Again, in Washington, there was a schoolgirl, early teens, seen in the funeral home, looking at the flowers." `Kids paid to drop off the rose?" `That's what I would go for.

  `And the message was exactly the same yes, I asked before.

  `Word for word. A calling card left by the killer, or killers.

  It's like a terrorist group claiming responsibility. Someone, or some organization, is telling us that, not only did they murder Laura, but also the four high-profile people as well." `And the rose? I heard you talking to some expert about roses." He paused, closing the files, and piling them neatly on his knees. `That's the most interesting piece of information. The man I spoke to is probably the world's greatest expert on roses. He's responsible for at least twelve new varieties himself, and what he doesn't know about other growers could be written on a pin head.

  `He gave you a name? It's a well-known rose?" `Not well known, but he knows of one person who's been experimenting with a white rose bearing blood-red tips on each petal. As far as he's aware, the person concerned has not actually pulled it off. He told me that one was exhibited at a show last year and it came very near to the p
erfection the grower is seeking. It was named Bleeding Heart, and he actually spoke to the grower who said she thought the perfect specimen would be ready in a year or two.

  `Someone we know?" `Someone we're going to know. A widow, aged forty-one, by the name of Maeve Horton. Maeve Horton, the younger sister of David Dragonpol.

  Maeve Horton who lives with her brother in his castle, Schloss Drache, on the banks of the Rhine.

  Maeve Horton, sister to David Dragonpol who, if we believe that letter we found, was "brother and dear dead lover" to Laura March." `So we pay a call on David Dragonpol and his sister?" `You bet we do." He worked the phones again for a couple of hours, first checking flights, making bookings and car reservations; then trying his many official contacts, winkling out a telephone number for Dragonpol at Schloss Drache. By midnight everything was in place.

  On the Thursday morning, they flew to Bonn, took delivery of the rental BMW and began the long drive down the Rhine to Andernach where they spent the night, and part of Friday morning at the delightful Villa am Rhine. It was from their suite at this hotel that Bond used the telephone number which he was told would get him in touch with Dragonpol.

  The telephone was answered by a woman who spoke fluent German with an atrocious British accent, so he launched straight into English.

  `Mrs Horton? Is that Mrs Horton?" `Yes, who's this?" She had a low, very calm voice and sounded as though she was the kind of woman who expected bad news every time the telephone rang.

  `You won't know me, Mrs Horton. My name's Bond. James Bond, and I really need to speak with your brother, Mr Dragonpol. Is he available?" She started to speak, then stopped and waited for a moment in silence. Bond had the impression she was not alone. Then: `What's it about, Mr Boned?" `Bond,' he corrected. `I'm a representative of a British government agency. I have my opposite number from Switzerland with me, and we really do have to speak with Mr Dragonpol if it's convenient. If not, we will wait, of course, but I personally feel it would be best to get this over and done with as quickly as possible." He let the words sink in, and felt that she had probably put her hand over the receiver and was talking to someone else.