Bond drank down his coffee. It was the usual story of big syndicate crime. You never saw more than the tip of the iceberg. But what did that matter to him? He had been sent to do one specific job. If his success benefited others, nobody, least of all M, could care less. Bond had been told to destroy the machine. If this unnamed man was the machine, it would be merely carrying out orders to destroy the man. Bond said: "I cannot promise that. You must see that. All I can say is that if the man tries to destroy me, I will destroy him."
Signor Kristatos took a toothpick out of the holder, stripped off the paper and set about cleaning his fingernails. When he had finished one hand he looked up. He said: "I do not often gamble on incertitudes. This time I will do so because it is you who are payingme, and not me you. Is all right? So now I will give you the informations. Then you are alone - solo. Tomorrow night I fly toKarachi. I have important pizniss there. I can only give you the informations. After that you run with the ball and -" he threw the dirty toothpick down on the table - "Che sera, sera."
"All right."
Signor Kristatos edged his chair nearer to Bond. He spoke softly and quickly. He gave specimen dates and names to document his narrative. He never hesitated for a fact and he did not waste time on irrelevant detail. It was a short story and a pithy one. There were two thousand American gangsters in the country - Italian-Americans who had been convicted and expelled from theUnited States. These men were in a bad way. They were on the blackest of all police lists and, because of their records, their own people were wary of employing them. A hundred of the toughest among them had pooled their funds and small groups fromthis elite had moved toBeirut ,Istanbul , Tangier andMacao - the great smuggling centres of the world. A further large section acted as couriers, and the bosses had acquired, through nominees, a small and respectable pharmaceutical business inMilan. To this centre the outlying groups smuggled opium and its derivatives. They used small craft across the Mediterranean, a group of stewards in an Italian charter airline and, as a regular weekly source of supply, the through carriage of the Orient Express in which whole sections of bogus upholstery were fitted by bribed members of the train cleaners in Istanbul. TheMilan firm - Pharmacia Colomba SA - acted as a clearing-house and as a convenient centre for breaking down the raw opium into heroin. Thence the couriers, using innocent motor cars of various makes, ran a delivery service to the middlemen inEngland.
Bond interrupted. "Our Customs are pretty good at spotting that sort of traffic. There aren't many hiding places in a car they don't know about. Where do these men carry the stuff?"
"Always in the spare wheel.You can carry twenty thousand pounds worth of heroin in one spare wheel."
"Don't they ever get caught - either bringing the stuff in toMilan or taking it on?"
"Certainly.Many times.But these are well-trained men. And they are tough. They never talk. If they are convicted, they receive ten thousand dollars for each year spent in prison. If they have families, they are cared for. And when all goes well they make good money. It is a co-operative. Each man receives his tranche of the brutto. Only the chief gets a special tranche."
"All right.Well, who is this man?"
Signor Kristatos put his hand up to the cheroot in his mouth. He kept the hand there and spoke softly from behind it. "Is a man they call 'The Dove', Enrico Colombo. Is the padrone of thisrestaurant. That is why I bring you here, so that you may see him. Is the fat man who sits with a blondewoman.At the table by the cassa. She is fromVienna. Her name is Lisl Baum. A luxus whore."
Bond said reflectively: "She is, is she?" He did not need to look. He had noticed the girl, as soon as he had sat down at the table. Every man in the restaurant would have noticed her. She had the gay, bold, forthcoming looks the Viennese are supposed to have and seldom do. There wasa vivacity and a charm about her that lit up her corner of the room. She had the wildest possible urchin cut in ash blonde, a pert nose, a wide laughing mouth and a black ribbon round her throat. James Bond knew that her eyes had been on him at intervals throughout the evening. Her companion had seemed just the type of rich, cheerful, good-living man she would be glad to have as her lover for a while. He would give her a good time. He would be generous.
There would be no regrets on either side. On the whole, Bond had vaguely approved of him. He liked cheerful, expansive people with a zest for life. Since he, Bond, could not have the girl, it was at least something that she was in good hands.But now? Bond glanced across the room. Thecouple were laughing about something. The man patted her cheek and got up and went to the door marked UFFICIO and went through and shut the door. So this was the man who ran the great pipeline intoEngland.The man with M's price of a hundred thousand pounds on his head. The man Kristatos wanted Bond to kill. Well, he had better get on with the job. Bond stared rudely across the room at the girl. When she lifted her head and looked at him, he smiled at her. Her eyes swept past him, but there was a half smile, as if for herself, on her lips, and when she took a cigarette out of her case and lit it and blew the smoke straight up towards the ceiling there was an offering of the throat and the profile that Bond knew were for him.
It was nearing the time for the after-cinema trade. The maŒtre d'h“tel was supervising the clearing of the unoccupied tables and the setting up of new ones. There was the usual bustle and slapping of napkins across chair-seats and tinkle of glass and cutlery being laid. Vaguely Bond noticed the spare chair at his table being whisked away to help build up a nearby table for six. He began asking Kristatos specific questions - the personal habits of Enrico Colombo, where he lived, the address of his firm inMilan , what other business interests he had. He did not notice the casual progress of the spare chair from its fresh table to another, and then to another, and finally through the door marked UFFICIO. There was no reason why he should.
When the chair was brought into his office, Enrico Colombo waved the maŒtre d'h“tel away and locked the door behind him. Then he went to the chair and lifted off the squab cushion and put it on his desk. He unzipped one side of the cushion and withdrew a Grundig tape-recorder, stopped the machine, ran the tape back, took it off the recorder and put it on a playback and adjusted the speed and volume. Then he sat down at his desk and lit a cigarette and listened, occasionally making further adjustments and occasionally repeating passages. At the end, when Bond's tinny voice said "She is, is she?" and there was a long silence interspersed with background noises from the restaurant, Enrico Colombo switched off the machine and sat looking at it. He looked at it for a full minute. His face showed nothing but acute concentration on his thoughts. Then he looked away from the machine and into nothing and said softly, out loud: "Son-a-beech." He got slowly to his feet and went to the door and unlocked it. He looked back once more at theGrundig, said "Son-a-beech" again with more emphasis and went out and back to his table.
Enrico Colombo spoke swiftly and urgently to the girl. She nodded and glanced across the room at Bond. He and Kristatos were getting up from the table. She said toColombo in a low, angry voice: "You are a disgusting man. Everybody said so and warned me against you. They were right. Just because you give me dinner in your lousy restaurant you think you have the right to insult me with your filthy propositions"- the girl's voice had got louder. Now she had snatched up her handbag and had got to her feet. She stood beside the table directly in the line of Bond's approach on his way to the exit.
Enrico Colombo's face was black with rage. Now he, too, was on his feet. "You goddam Austrian beech --"
"Don't dare insult my country, you Italian toad."She reached for a half-full glass of wine and hurled it accurately in the man's face. When he came at her it was easy for her to back the few steps into Bond who was standing with Kristatos politely waiting to get by. Enrico Colombo stood panting, wiping the wine off his face with a napkin. He said furiously to the girl: "Don't ever show your face inside my restaurant again." He made the gesture of spitting on the floor between them, turned and strode off through the door marked UFFICIO.
> The maŒtre d'h“tel had hurried up. Everyone in the restaurant had stopped eating. Bond took the girl by the elbow. "May I help you find a taxi?"
She jerked herself free. She said, still angry: "All men are pigs." She remembered her manners. She said stiffly: "You are very kind." She moved haughtily towards the door with the men in her wake.
There was a buzz in the restaurant and a renewed clatter of knives and forks. Everyone was delighted with the scene. The maŒtre d'h“tel, looking solemn, held open the door. He said to Bond: "I apologize, Monsieur. And you are very kind to be of assistance." A cruising taxi slowed. He beckoned it to the pavement and held open the door.
The girl got in. Bond firmly followed and closed the door. He said to Kristatos through the window: "I'll telephone you in the morning.All right?" Without waiting for the man's reply he sat back in the seat. The girl had drawn herself away into the farthest corner. Bond said: "Where shall I tell him?"
"Hotel Ambassadori."
They drove a short way in silence. Bond said: "Would you like to go somewhere first for a drink?"
"No thank you." She hesitated. "You are very kind but tonight I am tired."
"Perhaps another night."
"Perhaps, but I go toVenice tomorrow."
"I shall also be there. Will you have dinner with me tomorrow night?"
The girl smiled. She said: "I thought Englishmen were supposed to be shy. You are English, aren't you? What is your name? What do you do?"
"Yes, I'm English -My name's Bond - James Bond. I write books - adventure stories. I'm writing one now about drug smuggling. It's set inRome andVenice. The trouble is that I don't know enough about the trade. I am going round picking up stories about it. Do you know any?"
"So that is why you were having dinner with that Kristatos. I know of him. He has a bad reputation. No. I don't know any stories. I only know what everybody knows."
Bond said enthusiastically: "But that's exactly what I want. When I said 'stories' I didn't mean fiction. I meant the sort of high-level gossip that's probably pretty near the truth. That sort of thing's worth diamonds to a writer."
She laughed. "You mean that... diamonds?"
Bond said: "Well, I don't earn all that as a writer, but I've already sold an option on this story for a film, and if I can make it authentic enough I dare say they'll actually buy the film." He reached out and put his hand over hers in her lap. She did not take her hand away. "Yes, diamonds.A diamond clip from Van Cleef. Is it a deal?"
Now she took her hand away. They were arriving at the Ambassadori. She picked up her bag from the seat beside her. She turned on the seat so that she faced him. The commissionaire opened the door and the light from the street turned her eyes into stars. She examined his face witha certain seriousness. She said: "All men are pigs, but some are lesser pigs than others.All right. I will meet you.But not for dinner. What I may tell you is not for public places. I bathe every afternoon at theLido.But not at the fashionable plage. I bathe at the Bagni Alberoni, where the English poet Byron used to ride his horse. It is at the tip of the peninsula. The Vaporetto will take you there. You will find me there the day after tomorrow - at three in the afternoon. I shall be getting my last sunburn before the winter.Among the sand-dunes. You will see a pale yellow umbrella. Underneath it will be me." She smiled. "Knock on the umbrella and ask for Fraulein Lisl Baum."
She got out of the taxi. Bond followed. She held out her hand. "Thank you for coming to my rescue. Goodnight."
Bond said: "Three o'clockthen. I shall be there. Goodnight."
She turned and walked up the curved steps of the hotel. Bond looked after her thoughtfully, and then turned and got back into the taxi and told the man to take him to the Nazionale. He sat back and watched the neon signs ribbon past the window. Things, including the taxi, were going almost too fast for comfort. The only one over which he had any control was the taxi. He leant forward and told the man to drive more slowly.
The best train fromRome toVenice is the Laguna express that leaves every day atmidday. Bond, after a morning that was chiefly occupied with difficult talks with his London Headquarters on Station I's scrambler caught it by the skin of his teeth. The Laguna is a smart, streamlined affair that looks and sounds more luxurious than it is. The seats are made for small Italians and the restaurant car staff suffer from the disease that afflicts their brethren in the great trains all over the world - a genuine loathing for the modern traveller and particularly for the foreigner. Bond had a gangway seat over the axle in the rear aluminium coach. If the seven heavens had been flowing by outside the window he would not have cared. He kept his eyes inside the train, read a jerking book, spilled Chianti over the tablecloth and shifted his long, aching legs and cursed the Ferrovie Italiane dello Stato.
But at last there was Mestre and the dead straight finger of rail across the eighteenth century aquatint intoVenice. Then came the unfailing shock of the beauty that never betrays and the soft swaying progress down the Grand Canal into a blood-red sunset, and the extreme pleasure - so it seemed - of the Gritti Palace that Bond should have ordered the best double room on the first floor.
That evening, scattering thousand-lira notes like leaves in Vallombrosa, James Bond sought, at Harry's Bar, at Florian's, and finally upstairs in the admirable Quadri, to establish to anyone who might be interested that he was what he had wished to appear to the girl - a prosperous writer who lived high and well. Then, in the temporary state of euphoria that a first night inVenice engenders, however high and serious the purpose of the visitor, James Bond walked back to the Gritti and had eight hours dreamless sleep.
May and October are the best months inVenice. The sun is soft and the nights are cool. The glittering scene is kinder to the eyes and there isa freshness in the air that helps one to hammer out those long miles of stone and terrazza and marble that are intolerable to the feet in summer. And there are fewer people. Although Venice is the one town in the world that can swallow up a hundred thousand tourists as easily as it can a thousand - hiding them down its side-streets, using them for crowd scenes on the piazzas, stuffing them into the vaporetti - it is still better to share Venice with the minimum number of packaged tours and Lederhosen.
Bond spent the next morningstrolling the back-streets in the hope that he would be able to uncover a tail. He visited a couple of churches - not to admire their interiors but to discover if anyone came in after him through the main entrance before he left by the side door. No one was following him. Bond went to Florian's and had an Americano and listened to a couple of French culture-snobs discussing the imbalance of the containing facade of St Mark's Square. On an impulse, he bought a postcard and sent it off to his secretary who had once been with the Georgian Group toItaly and had never allowed Bond to forget it. He wrote: "Veniceis wonderful.Have so far inspected the railway station and the Stock Exchange.Very aesthetically satisfying.To the Municipal Waterworks this afternoon and then an old Brigitte Bardot at the Scala Cinema. Do you know a wonderful tune called 'O Sole Mio?' It's v. romantic like everything here.JB."
Pleased with his inspiration, Bond had an early luncheon and went back to his hotel. He locked the door of his room and took off his coat and ran over the Walther PPK. He put up the safe and practised one or two quick draws and put the gun back in the holster. It was time to go. He went along to the landing-stage and boarded the twelve-forty vaporetto to Alberoni, out of sight across the mirrored lagoons. Then he settled down in a seat in the bows and wondered what was going to happen to him.
From the jetty at Alberoni, on theVenice side of theLido peninsula, there is a half mile dusty walk across the neck of land to the Bagni Alberoni facing theAdriatic. It is a curiously deserted world, this tip of the famous peninsula. A mile down the thin neck of land the luxury real estate development has petered out in a scattering of cracked stucco villas and bankrupt housing projects, and here there is nothing but the tiny fishing village of Alberoni, a sanatorium for students, a derelict experimental station belongi
ng to the Italian Navy and some massive weed-choked gun emplacements from the last war. In the no man's land in the centre of this thin tongue of land is the Golf du Lido, whose brownish undulating fairways meander around the ruins of ancient fortifications. Not many people come toVenice to play golf, and the project is kept alive for its snob appeal by the grand hotels of theLido. The golf course is surrounded by a high wire fence hung at intervals, as if it protected something of great value or secrecy, with threatening Vietatos and Prohibitos. Around this wired enclave, the scrub and sandhills have not even been cleared of mines, and amongst the rusting barbed wire are signs saying MINAS. PERICOLO DI MORTEbeneath a roughly stencilled skull and crossbones. The whole area is strange and melancholy and in extraordinary contrast to the gay carnival world ofVenice less than an hour away across the lagoons.
Bond was sweating slightly by the time he had walked the half mile across the peninsula to the plage, and he stood for a moment under the last of the acacia trees that had bordered the dusty road to cool off while he got his bearings. In front of him was a rickety wooden archway whose central span said BAGNI ALBERONI in faded blue paint. Beyond were the lines of equally dilapidated wooden cabins, and then a hundred yards of sand and then the quiet blue glass of the sea. There were no bathers and the place seemed to be closed, but when he walked through the archway he heard the tinny sound of a radio playing Neapolitan music. It came from a ramshackle hut that advertised Coca-Cola and various Italian soft drinks. Deck-chairs were stacked against its walls and there were two pedallos and a child's half inflated seahorse. The whole establishment looked so derelict that Bond could not imagine it doing business even at the height of the summer season. He stepped off the narrow duckboards into the soft, burned sand and moved round behind the huts to the beach. He walked down to the edge of the sea. To the left, until it disappeared in the autumn heat haze, the wide empty sand swept away in a slight curve towards theLido proper. To the right was half a mile of beach terminating in the seawall at the tip of the peninsula. The seawall stretched like a finger out into the silent mirrored sea, and at intervals along its top were the flimsy derricks of the octopus fishermen. Behind the beach were the sandhills and a section of the wire fence surrounding the golfcourse. On the edge of the sandhills, perhaps five hundred yards away, there was a speck of bright yellow.
Ian Fleming - James Bond 007 - 08 - 1960 - For Your Eyes Only Page 12
