Death Is Forever

by John Gardner

  He stayed while Bond changed into a black cotton roll neck and a light zippered nylon windbreaker, both of which had been packed in the larger section of the briefcase. While in the bathroom he also raided the business end of the case, distributing various articles in the pockets of the windbreaker which would hide the butt of the ASP, in its usual place, hard against the small of his back.

  They were just leaving to go to Wimper’s room when the telephone buzzed: even the phones in the hotel emitted a soft noise, as though apologising for the intrusion. Bond answered with an equally placid ‘Yes?’

  ‘Mr Bunyan, this is the front desk. We tried to get you earlier, but didn’t wish to bother you during dinner. Your wife telephoned. She’s staying with your other friends in Venice tonight and says they’ll all be back first thing in the morning.’

  ‘She leave a number where I can get her?’

  ‘I’m afraid not, sir.’

  He returned the handset to its rest. ‘I imagine that means they’re all with Weisen.’

  Wimper nodded. ‘Not good, James. They’ll be here for you before the night’s over, so let’s hope we’re long gone before they arrive. Until I’ve got hold of the stuff we need, I suggest you stay very alert.’ He looked Bond up and down, like a tailor showing disgust at the suit worn by a prospective client. ‘Your shoe size?’ he asked. ‘I think we both require black trainers.’

  They agreed on that, and went through the list of items that Wimper would have to assemble if the assault on Weisen’s palazzo stood any chance of success. When they concurred, Wimper led Bond to his room, a much smaller single without such necessary items as a levitating television set.

  ‘I should be back in an hour – two hours max,’ the former Vopo said softly. ‘I should keep the lights off if I were you. Double-lock the door. I’ll tap out a Morse code W, but check me through the fisheye, just in case. I’ve seen Weisen doing fast interrogations. He’s rabid and very enthusiastic, so I might not be able to hold out if he gets his hands on me. Keep your fingers crossed.’

  ‘I’ll keep everything crossed.’ He punched Wimper lightly on the shoulder. ‘You sure you can get all this equipment?’

  ‘I told you. I have people here who owe me a lot of favours. Trust me. By the time I get back, I should know how we’re fixed for a boat.’

  He explained that while, technically, the Cipriani’s launches ran all night, they usually only had one of the pilots on duty once all guests were accounted for. ‘The guy sleeps on the ground floor, they wake him up if anyone wants to go over in the wee small hours, and they moor the launches down from the landing stage, near the pool – so sleeping guests won’t be disturbed. We’ll simply walk through the gardens, cast off, and start the motor when we’re offshore. Just don’t get yourself taken while I’m away.’

  ‘The same applies. I wouldn’t want to come searching for you by myself.’

  ‘Look, if I disappear you should call in reinforcements. Don’t try the Dwarf’s place on your own.’

  ‘I’ll bear it in mind.’ He followed Wimper to the door, double-locking it as soon as he left.

  Then Bond pulled a chair into a corner of the room from where he had an unobstructed view of the door and window, and waited, silent, in the darkness.

  His eyes quickly adjusted, and he concentrated on staying alert, mentally going through the weapons and specialist accessories already available to him.

  Apart from the ASP and four extra speed loaders, he carried his favourite fighting knife – a finely honed updated version of the old Sykes-Fairbairn commando dagger – which had been concealed in a sliding compartment at the base of the briefcase. The scabbard was strapped to his right calf, while on his left was a Buckmaster survival knife which would obviate the need for an anchor once they had reached the top of Weisen’s building and were ready to go down the skylight.

  The Buckmaster is the survival knife for special forces. The handle is hollow and the blade razor sharp, slightly curved on one side, while the upper half of the other side is wickedly serrated. Inside the handle are detachable anchor pins, used for grappling hooks, and the skeleton handle, under its outer haft, is fashioned into a knuckleduster.

  He also carried the two pens, with two refills for each, nestling within a shockproof case inside the windbreaker, while in other pockets there were two Haley & Waller Dartcord rapid-opening systems: explosive charges in strip form, with a primer and detonator for each. With its chevron cross-section, the Dartcord will blow precision holes through doors, steel and brickwork with minimum effort.

  In small leather pouches attached to his belt there were further instruments, including three so-called ‘flash-bang’ stun grenades – in the handy cartridge size, which Ann Reilly had assured him were ‘super-effective’, with a new type of explosive and a higher grade of flash powder. Also, within easy reach, he carried a steel Leatherman. A tool measuring only two and a half inches by less than an inch, the Leatherman converts into a pair of heavy-duty pliers, knife, screwdriver, file and other implements. In all, he found it easier and more sturdy to use than the omnipresent Swiss Army knife.

  Weisen’s men arrived about seventy minutes after Wimper left. They came intent on a frontal attack, knocking at the door – just as they had doubtless already knocked at Bond’s door.

  Silently he moved from the chair to stand, back flat against the wall, directly to one side of the door. His automatic pistol was out, safety off, the weapon held high, close to his left shoulder.

  Waiting. Listening to the scratching sounds. The room had already been made up for the night, so he was under no illusion that this was maid service. Chambermaids usually carry master keys, and would not, therefore, try the locks with picks. He stood, still as a tree on an airless morning, hearing only the sounds of the picklocks and his heart thudding in his ears.

  Whoever was there worked for ten minutes, but the two double locks defeated them. He heard the soft footsteps move away from the door. It would take them only a short time to climb across the roofs, and check out his own room, via the window, before reaching the French doors of Wimper’s room. That was the next natural move, so there was time to prepare a small surprise for them.

  Softly he opened the French doors, which could be forced by a five-year-old with a toothpick. These were not five-year-olds, and he was certain they were armed with more deadly weapons than toothpicks.

  The French doors out of Wimper’s room led to a narrow path, culminating in a private sun deck, similar to the one outside Bond’s room. These small circular plots, complete with table, sun umbrellas and smart wooden loungers, had slatted wooden floors and were hedged about with bushes and ferns which gave them complete privacy.

  Wimper’s deck, like his own, he figured, would have a view of the hotel pool below, for the ferns and bushes camouflaged a brick wall which dropped sheer to make up part of the pool’s surrounding sun trap. Silently he moved forward. Already he could hear the sound of at least one of the intruders testing the strength of the vines growing against the wall about thirty feet below.

  Kneeling, Bond took out the Leatherman and opened up the pliers. From one of his windbreaker’s zipped pockets he drew out a length of thin wire, measured off several feet, then cut it with the wire-stripping recess of the pliers.

  The vine was shaking gently as one of the men began to climb. He heard a whispered conversation from below.

  ‘It’ll take you also. It’s strong enough.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Certain. Come on, we can both be in at the kill.’

  All this in German.

  Working quickly, he secured one end of the wire around the solid metal stem of the table, which was set in a heavy stone base. He ran the wire at an angle, just above the slats of the floor so that anybody trying to reach the path to Wimper’s room would certainly either trip or tread on it.

  Taking out one of the cartridge-sized ‘flash-bangs’, he rammed the base hard between two of the slats at the very e
dge of the deck, and winding the end of the wire through the little ring, he loosened the pin. The wire was taut across the floor. One hard knock and the stun grenade would explode.

  He retreated, closing the French doors but remaining on the outside. Sinking to his knees, he removed the long padded box from inside the windbreaker, and lifted out the gold pen. This one he handled very carefully, reminding himself that you could write only death warrants with it, and it gave you but two chances.

  The weapon was a pen gun – a refined, more sophisticated, version of the En-Pen used by the clandestine services of World War II. The old En-Pen was a single-shot device, with a kick that bruised your hand and made the business of killing highly problematic. This new weapon, which Q Branch had unofficially named the Mont Non-Blanc, carried a pair of modified 0.22 rounds. The bullets were hollow-point and filled with a small charge of explosive which was detonated on impact. One of these 0.22 bullets, grazing a man in the shoulder, would, most likely, take the target’s arm off – unless you were lucky and only lost most of the bone in the resulting explosion.

  The safety catch was incorporated into the pen’s clip. Pushing back on the clip activated the safety, pushing forward, took the safety off. You then held the weapon firmly between the first and second fingers, making sure that the end was cushioned against the palm. Aim was instinctive, and slight pressure on the clip fired the first round, the gases of which automatically loaded the second ready for the next shot.

  Bond waited, feeling the cold chill of the night air for the first time, and realising that the mist still hung around the building in patches. Once more he could hear the beat of his heart, and he took in steady, slow, deep breaths. At moments like this he never allowed himself to think of the brutality of killing, but kept his mind apart from the reality, concentrating only on the technique of his work. He saw the leaves at the top of the wall start to shake, and a male figure came silently onto the deck, reaching back to assist a second man across.

  Bond slid the pen’s clip forward and brought his hand up, steadying it by wrapping the fingers of his left hand around the right wrist. As the two figures moved forward, he closed his eyes against the flash that would come as soon as the wire was tripped.

  Stun grenades cannot kill or wound, unless you are foolish enough to hang on to one after the pin has been pulled. They do however produce one – sometimes two – explosions, described in official literature as ‘distracting’. In fact the noise level can be like that of a light artillery shell landing nearby, and the accompanying violent flash will temporarily blind anyone in the vicinity.

  The flash came before the explosion. Bond felt it through his eyelids, and a fraction later the blast was strong enough to shatter the windows behind him.

  He opened his eyes, looking straight at the smoke pluming out and swirling around the sun deck. The pair of trespassers were reeling around the area, very close to the wall. He lifted the pen and fired, twice and in quick succession.

  One of the men had time to scream as he went backwards out of sight, a thud coming from below, just as the hotel alarm system started to shriek. The second man was luckier. Unharmed by the bullets, he vaulted unsteadily over the wall, scrabbling with his hands for the vine before his disorientation and semi-daze caused him to clutch air and he disappeared with a little scream.

  Back through the broken windows, Bond could hear the sounds of panic in the corridor outside Wimper’s room. This was no time to hang around and answer questions, he decided, but as he approached the door, he heard an urgent knocking, tap-bump-bump, tap-bump-bump. The letter W in Morse code.

  He did not even bother to check out the fisheye, but opened up to find August Wimper, leaning against the door jamb, the familiar camel-hair coat around his shoulders, and one hand holding a tote bag.

  ‘Was it something I said?’ he asked, deadpan.

  ‘No,’ Bond was halfway out of the door. ‘No, Gus. I forgot that I’d left the gas on. Silly of me.’

  Guests and staff seemed to be milling around in a kind of panic. The reception foyer was full of people in various forms of dress and undress. The majority of the women wore towelling robes and hair in curlers. Some looked decidedly embarrassed. As they passed through the crowd, Bond saw the languid, dark Italian girl, from dinner, trying to pretend she was not with the elderly man who did not look as suave without teeth.

  Wimper stopped one of the dark-suited managers. ‘Was it a terrorist bomb? This is disgraceful, I doubt if I’ll ever stay here again.’

  The man tried to calm him, but Gus stuck his head into the air and marched back in the direction from which they had come, Bond following, his face registering the annoyance which had sounded in Wimper’s voice.

  ‘Where in hell’re we going, Gus?’ he inquired.

  ‘The gardens are out of the doors on the other side. We’re going to rescue the ladies, aren’t we? What they say in the old cowboy movies? We’re the Fifth Cavalry riding to save Eagle and Praxi.’

  ‘Don’t forget Bruin.’

  ‘Ja, yes, we can do with that old bear’s strength.’

  Outside, from across the water, came the sound of sirens as fire, ambulance and police launches slid through the mist towards the Cipriani.

  Bond stayed in the light from the hotel for a moment in order to reload the pen gun, Wimper nagging at him to move.

  ‘Can’t think of a better time to rip off one of their boats,’ Wimper said. You could hear the smile rather than see it. ‘You’ve obviously had a very exciting evening. You get them?’

  ‘One for certain. The other could well have damaged himself on the way down. There’ll be a lot of people asking for explanations.’

  They were in the garden now, and there, hovering near the moored boats, were two Cipriani employees, wearing the caps of the hotel’s launch pilots. ‘Bluff it out.’ Wimper increased his stride. ‘I can never go back anyway, and I had some very good clothes in that room. I hope you’ve left nothing important.’

  Bond felt his pockets. As well as the weapons and equipment, he had three passports, several small envelopes containing credit cards matching the different identities, the equivalent of £2,000 in sterling travellers cheques, and a wad of Deutschmarks. He would, reluctantly, have to forget about the briefcase, though he could afford to lose the blazer, spare shirts, socks and underwear. Never leave home without it, he thought of his Amex Platinum card. He could go shopping tomorrow, if he was still alive.

  ‘You there.’ Wimper spoke Italian with a thick German accent. ‘We need to get over to San Marco now. I’ll return in the morning, but we’re certainly not staying in this hotel for another minute.’ He flashed his Cipriani guest card and the two men conferred for a few seconds while he kept up a flow of Italian invective about how useless the hotel was, how he would sue them if any of his property was damaged, and how this kind of thing would never happen in a good German hotel. At last one of them beckoned. ‘We’ll take you over.’ He headed towards the moored launches. ‘I’m on duty anyway, and Franco here has to get home. It was a big bang there. What happened?’

  ‘It could’ve been one of the waiters self-destructing,’ Wimper muttered. Then, louder, ‘It must’ve been terrorists. We could all have died in our beds.’

  The Italian nodded sagely and said something about the world getting more dangerous every day, and times being out of joint. It would have sounded almost Shakespearean if he had not used a large number of Italian curses.

  One of the police launches hailed them as they pulled away, and there was some good-humoured banter between the cops and the two Cipriani men.

  Franco, the one getting a ride home, came through the long cabin to examine something in the stern. The man at the helm did not even glance back.

  ‘You get everything?’ Bond asked in almost a whisper.

  ‘The lot. You feel up to the climb?’

  ‘I feel up to getting the others away from Venice.’

  ‘I think we’ll have to take care of Wei
sen and Haardt before we finally wave farewell.’

  The mist was patchy, sometimes almost clear, with a swirl like thin smoke hanging close to the water, then they would hit what seemed to be almost solid cloud.

  It was not until they came out into a stretch completely devoid of mist and fog that Bond realised they had turned away from the landing stages at the Piazza San Marco and were heading into the Grand Canal itself.

  ‘We need San Marco!’ he called to the helmsman.

  ‘Yes, but I’m afraid we need the Grand Canal and you with us.’ Franco stood in the stern, an automatic pistol in his hand.

  The helmsman glanced over his shoulder with a smile. ‘We brought two guys over to get you,’ he said in perfect English. ‘I think we’ll get a bonus for bringing you back alive.’

  Wimper pulled his coat more tightly around his shoulders, and smiled straight into the helmsman’s face. ‘Oh, I’m sure you will, Antonio. I’m sure you will.’ He turned his head towards Franco. ‘Herr Weisen will be very pleased with you,’ his voice soft and pleasant as honey.

  15

  DEATH ON THE GRAND CANAL

  Gus Wimper sighed, a touch loudly – a long melancholy sound which seemed to come from a dark place within his very soul. Then he squared his shoulders, allowing the topcoat to drop onto the padded bench behind him. He began to rise from the seat, hands open, arms held away from his body to show he was unarmed.

  ‘Watch it, Kraut.’ Franco, the one in the stern toting a gun, took half a step further into the cabin.

  ‘Oh, don’t be stupid . . . What’s your name? Franco? I’m not about to hurt anyone; and I should be careful with the racist remarks, your boss wouldn’t like it.’ He followed through, standing up and turning towards the helmsman. As he did so, Bond felt a slight pressure as Wimper’s leg touched his knee. The signal was meant to tell him something, and he could only translate it in terms of Wimper trying to distract the two men.

  ‘Antonio,’ Wimper moved a fraction to his left, facing the helmsman’s back. ‘I didn’t recognise you with a beard – but, then, the light wasn’t very good . . .’