Bond 14 - Octopussy and the Living Daylights

by Ian Fleming

  Captain Sender, icily silent, went off into the kitchen to brew, from the sounds, his inevitable cuppa.

  Bond felt the whisky beginning to melt the coiled nerves in his stomach. Now then, Liselotte, how in hell are you going to get out of this fix?

  It was exactly six five when Sender, at his post, began talking excitedly. ‘Bond, there’s something moving way back over there. Now he’s stopped – wait, no, he’s on the move again, keeping low. There’s a bit of broken wall there. He’ll be out of sight of the opposition. But thick weeds, yards of them, ahead of him. Christ! He’s coming through the weeds. And they’re moving. Hope to God they think it’s only the wind. Now he’s through and gone to ground. Any reaction?’

  ‘No,’ said Bond tensely. ‘Keep on telling me. How far to the frontier?’

  ‘He’s only got about fifty yards to go.’ Captain Sender’s voice was harsh with excitement. ‘Broken stuff, but some of it’s open. Then a solid chunk of wall right up against the pavement. He’ll have to get over it. They can’t fail to spot him then. Now! Now he’s made ten yards, and another ten. Got him clearly then. Blackened his face and hands. Get ready! Any moment now he’ll make the last sprint.’

  James Bond felt the sweat pouring down his face and neck. He took a chance and quickly wiped his hands down his sides and then got them back to the rifle, his finger inside the guard, just lying along the curved trigger. ‘There’s something moving in the room behind the gun. They must have spotted him. Get that Opel working.’

  Bond heard the code word go into the microphone, heard the Opel in the street below start up, felt his pulse quicken as the engine leaped into life and a series of ear-splitting cracks came from the exhaust.

  The movement in the black cave was now definite. A black arm with a black glove had reached out and under the stock.

  ‘Now!’ ejaculated Captain Sender. ‘Now! He’s run for the wall! He’s up it! Just going to jump!’

  And then, in the Sniperscope, Bond saw the head of ‘Trigger’ – the purity of the profile, the golden bell of hair – all laid out along the stock of the Kalashnikov! She was dead, a sitting duck! Bond’s fingers flashed down to the screws, inched them round and, as yellow flame fluttered at the snout of the sub-machine-gun, squeezed the trigger.

  The bullet, dead on at three hundred and ten yards, must have hit where the stock ended up the barrel, might have got her in the left hand, but the effect was to tear the gun off its mountings, smash it against the side of the window-frame and then hurl it out of the window. It turned several times on its way down and crashed into the middle of the street.

  ‘He’s over!’ shouted Captain Sender. ‘He’s over! He’s done it! My God, he’s done it!’

  ‘Get down!’ said Bond sharply, and threw himself sideways off the bed as the big eye of a searchlight in one of the black windows blazed on, swerving up the street towards their block and their room. Then gunfire crashed and the bullets howled into their window, ripping the curtains, smashing the woodwork, thudding into the walls.

  Behind the roar and zing of the bullets, Bond heard the Opel race off down the street and, behind that again, the fragmentary whisper of the orchestra. The combination of the two background noises clicked. Of course! The orchestra had probably raised an infernal din throughout the Haus der Ministerien, having been used, like the back-firing Opel on this side, to provide some cover for a sharp burst of fire, on their side by ‘Trigger’. Had she carried her weapon to and fro every day in that ’cello case? Was the whole orchestra composed of K.G.B. women? Had the other instrument cases contained only equipment – the big drum perhaps the searchlight – while the real instruments were available in the concert hall? Too elaborate? Too fantastic? Probably. But there had been no doubt about the girl. In the Sniperscope, Bond had even been able to see one wide, heavily lashed, aiming eye. Had he hurt her? Almost certainly her left arm. There would be no chance of seeing her, seeing how she was, if she left with the orchestra. Now he would never see her again. Their window would be a death trap. To underline the fact, a stray bullet smashed into the mechanism of the Winchester, already overturned and damaged, and hot lead splashed down on Bond’s hand, burning the skin. On Bond’s emphatic oath, abruptly the firing stopped and silence sang in the room.

  Captain Sender emerged from beside his bed, brushing glass out of his hair. They crunched across the floor and through the splintered door into the kitchen. Here, because it faced away from the street, it was safe to switch on the light.

  ‘Any damage?’ asked Bond.

  ‘No. You all right?’ Captain Sender’s pale eyes were bright with the fever that comes in battle. They also, Bond noticed, held a sharp glint of accusation.

  ‘Yes. Just get an Elastoplast for my hand. Caught a splash from one of the bullets.’ Bond went into the bathroom. When he came out, Captain Sender was sitting by the walkie-talkie he had fetched from the sitting-room. He was speaking into it. Now he said into the microphone, ‘That’s all for now. Fine about 272. Hurry the armoured car, if you would. Be glad to get out of here, and 007 will need to write his version of what happened. Okay? Then OVER and OUT.’

  Captain Sender turned to Bond. Half accusing, half embarrassed, he said, ‘Afraid Head of Station needs your reasons in writing for not getting that chap. I had to tell him I’d seen you alter your aim at the last second. Gave “Trigger” time to get off a burst. Damned lucky for 272 he’d just begun his sprint. Blew chunks off the wall behind him. What was it all about?’

  James Bond knew he could lie, knew he could fake a dozen reasons why. Instead he took a deep pull at the strong whisky he had poured for himself, put the glass down and looked Captain Sender straight in the eye.

  ‘“Trigger” was a woman.’

  ‘So what? K.G.B. have got plenty of women agents – and women gunners. I’m not in the least surprised. The Russian women’s team always does well in the World Championships. Last meeting, in Moscow, they came first, second and third against seven countries. I can even remember two of their names – Donskaya and Lomova, terrific shots. She may even have been one of them. What did she look like? Records’ll probably be able to turn her up.’

  ‘She was a blonde. She was the girl who carried the ’cello in that orchestra. Probably had her gun in the ’cello case. The orchestra was to cover up the shooting.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Captain Sender slowly, ‘I see. The girl you were keen on?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry, but I’ll have to put that in my report too. You had clear orders to exterminate “Trigger”. ’

  There came the sound of a car approaching. It pulled up somewhere below. The bell rang twice. Sender said, ‘Well, let’s get going. They’ve sent an armoured car to get us out of here.’ He paused. His eyes flicked over Bond’s shoulder, avoiding Bond’s eyes. ‘Sorry about the report. Got to do my duty, y’know. You should have killed that sniper whoever it was.’

  Bond got up. He suddenly didn’t want to leave the stinking little smashed-up flat, leave the place from which, for three days, he had had this long-range, one-sided romance with an unknown girl – an unknown enemy agent with much the same job in her outfit as he had in his. Poor little bitch! She would be in worse trouble now than he was! She’d certainly be court-martialled for muffing this job. Probably be kicked out of the K.G.B. He shrugged. At least they’d stop short of killing her – as he himself had done.

  James Bond said wearily, ‘Okay. With any luck it’ll cost me my Double-O number. But tell Head of Station not to worry. That girl won’t do any more sniping. Probably lost her left hand. Certainly broke her nerve for that kind of work. Scared the living daylights out of her. In my book, that was enough. Let’s go.’

  4 ....... 007 IN NEW YORK

  IT WAS around ten o’clock on a blue and golden morning at the end of September and the B.O.A.C. Monarch flight from London had come in at the same time as four other international flights. James Bond, his stomach queasy from the B.O.A.
C. version of ‘An English Country House Breakfast’, took his place stoically in a long queue that included plenty of squalling children and in due course said that he had spent the last ten nights in London. Then to Immigration – fifteen minutes to show his passport that said he was ‘David Barlow, Merchant’ and that he had eyes and hair and was six feet tall; and then to the Gehenna of the Idlewild Customs that has been carefully designed, in Bond’s opinion, to give visitors to the United States coronary thrombosis. Everyone, each with his stupid little trolley, looked, after a night’s flight, wretched and undignified. Waiting for his suitcase to appear behind the glass of the unloading bay and then to be graciously released for him to fight for and hump over to the Customs lines, all of which were overloaded while each bag or bundle (why not a spot-check?) was opened and prodded and then laboriously closed, often between slaps at fretting children, by its exhausted owner. Bond glanced up at the glass-walled balcony that ran round the great hall. A man in a rainproof and Trilby, middle-aged, nondescript, was inspecting the orderly hell through a pair of folding opera-glasses. Anybody examining him or, indeed, anyone else through binoculars was an object of suspicion to James Bond, but now his conspiratorial mind merely registered that this would be a good link in an efficient hotel-robbery machine. The man with the glasses would note the rich-looking woman declaring her jewellery, slip downstairs when she was released from Customs, tail her into New York, get beside her at the desk, hear her room number being called to the captain, and the rest would be up to the mechanics. Bond shrugged. At least the man didn’t seem interested in him. He had his single suitcase passed by the polite man with the badge. Then, sweating with the unnecessary central heating, he carried it out through the automatic glass doors into the blessed fresh fall air. The Carey Cadillac, as a message had told him, was already waiting. James Bond always used the firm. They had fine cars and superb drivers, rigid discipline and total discretion, and they didn’t smell of stale cigar smoke. Bond even wondered if Commander Carey’s organization, supposing it had equated David Barlow with James Bond, would have betrayed their standards by informing C.I.A. Well, no doubt the United States had to come first, and anyway, did Commander Carey know who James Bond was? The Immigration people certainly did. In the great black bible with the thickly printed yellow pages the officer had consulted when he took Bond’s passport, Bond knew that there were three Bonds and that one of them was ‘James, British, Passport 391354. Inform Chief Officer.’ How closely did Carey’s work with these people? Probably only if it was police business. Anyway, James Bond felt pretty confident that he could spend twenty-four hours in New York, make the contact and get out again without embarrassing explanations having to be given to Messrs Hoover or McCone. For this was an embarrassing, unattractive business that M. had sent Bond anonymously to New York to undertake. It was to warn a nice girl, who had once worked for the Secret Service, an English girl now earning her living in New York, that she was cohabiting with a Soviet agent of the K.G.B. attached to the U.N. and that M. knew that the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. were getting very close to learning her identity. It was doing the dirt on two friendly organizations, of course, and it would be highly embarrassing if Bond were found out, but the girl had been a first-class staff officer, and when he could, M. looked after his own. So Bond had been instructed to make contact and he had arranged to do so, that afternoon at three o’clock, outside (the rendezvous had seemed appropriate to Bond) the Reptile House at the Central Park Zoo.

  Bond pressed the button that let down the glass partition and leaned forward. ‘The Astor, please.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ The big black car weaved through the curves and out of the airport enclave on to the Van Wyck Expressway, now being majestically torn to pieces and rebuilt for the 1964–1965 World’s Fair.

  James Bond sat back and lit one of his last Morland Specials. By lunchtime it would be king-size Chesterfields. The Astor. It was as good as another and Bond liked the Times Square jungle – the hideous souvenir shops, the sharp clothiers, the giant feedomats, the hypnotic neon signs, one of which said BOND in letters a mile high. Here was the guts of New York, the living entrails. His other favourite quarters had gone – Washington Square, the Battery, Harlem, where you now needed a passport and two detectives. The Savoy Ballroom! What fun it had been in the old days! There was still Central Park, which would now be at its most beautiful – stark and bright. As for the hotels, they too had gone – the Ritz Carlton, the St. Regis that had died with Michael Arlen. The Carlyle was perhaps the lone survivor. The rest were all the same – those sighing lifts, the rooms full of last month’s air and a vague memory of ancient cigars, the empty ‘You’re welcomes,’ the thin coffee, the almost blue-white boiled eggs for breakfast (Bond had once had a small apartment in New York. He had tried everywhere to buy brown eggs until finally some grocery clerk had told him, ‘We don’t stock ’em, mister. People think they’re dirty’), the dank toast (that shipment of toast racks to the Colonies must have foundered!). Ah me! Yes, the Astor would do as well as another.

  Bond glanced at his watch. He would be there by eleven-thirty, then a brief shopping expedition, but a very brief one because nowadays there was little to buy in the shops that wasn’t from Europe – except the best garden furniture in the world, and Bond hadn’t got a garden. The drug-store first for half a dozen of Owens incomparable toothbrushes. Hoffritz on Madison Avenue for one of their heavy, toothed Gillette-type razors, so much better than Gillette’s own product, Tripler’s for some of those French golf socks made by Izod, Scribner’s because it was the last great bookshop in New York and because there was a salesman there with a good nose for thrillers, and then to Abercrombie’s to look over the new gadgets and, incidentally, make a date with Solange (appropriately employed in their Indoor Games Department) for the evening.

  The Cadillac was running the hideous gauntlet of the used car dumps, and chromium-plated swindles leered and winked. What happened to these re-sprayed crocks when the weather had finally rotted their guts? Where did they finally go to die? Mightn’t they be useful if they were run into the sea to conquer coastal erosion? Take a letter to the Herald Tribune!

  Then there was the question of lunch. Dinner with Solange would be easy – Lutèce in the sixties, one of the great restaurants of the world. But for lunch by himself? In the old days it would certainly have been the ‘21’, but the expense-account aristocracy had captured even that stronghold, inflating the prices and, because they didn’t know good from bad, deflating the food. But he would go there for old times’ sake and have a couple of dry martinis – Beefeaters with a domestic vermouth, shaken with a twist of lemon peel – at the bar. And then what about the best meal in New York – oyster stew with cream, crackers, and Miller High Life at the Oyster Bar at Grand Central? No, he didn’t want to sit up at a bar – somewhere spacious and comfortable where he could read a paper in peace. Yes. That was it! The Edwardian Room at the Plaza, a corner table. They didn’t know him there, but he knew he could get what he wanted to eat – not like Chambord or Pavilion with their irritating Wine and Foodmanship and, in the case of the latter, the miasma of a hundred different women’s scents to confound your palate. He would have one more dry martini at the table, then smoked salmon and the particular scrambled eggs he had once (Felix Leiter knew the head-waiter) instructed them how to make.* ‘Yes, that sounded all right. He would have to take a chance with the smoked salmon. It used to be Scotch in the Edwardian Room, not that thickly cut, dry and tasteless Canadian stuff. But one could never tell with American food. As long as they got their steaks and sea-food right, the rest could go to hell. And everything was so long frozen, in some vast communal food-morgue presumably, that flavour had gone from all American food except the Italian. Everything tasted the same – a sort of neutral food taste. When had a fresh chicken – not a broiler – a fresh farm egg, a fish caught that day, last been served in a New York restaurant? Was there a market in New York, like les Halles in Paris and Smithfields in London,
where one could actually see fresh food and buy it? Bond had never heard of one. People would say that it was unhygienic. Were the Americans becoming too hygienic in general – too bug-conscious? Every time Bond had made love to Solange, at a time when they should be relaxing in each other’s arms, she would retire to the bathroom for a long quarter of an hour and there was a lengthy period after that when he couldn’t kiss her because she had gargled with T.C.P. And the pills she took if she had a cold! Enough to combat double pneumonia. But James Bond smiled at the thought of her and wondered what they would do together – apart from Lutèce and Love – that evening. Again, New York had everything. He had heard, though he had never succeeded in tracing them, that one could see blue films with sound and colour and that one’s sex life was never the same thereafter. That would be an experience to share with Solange! And that bar, again still undiscovered, which Felix Leiter had told him was the rendezvous for sadists and masochists of both sexes. The uniform was black leather jackets and leather gloves. If you were a sadist, you wore the gloves under the left shoulder strap. For the masochists it was the right. As with the transvestite places in Paris and Berlin, it would be fun to go and have a look. In the end, of course, they would probably just go to The Embers or to hear Solange’s favourite jazz and then home for more love and T.C.P.

  James Bond smiled to himself. They were soaring over the Triborough, that supremely beautiful bridge into the serried battlements of Manhattan. He liked looking forward to his pleasures, to stolen exeats between the working hours. He enjoyed day-dreaming about them, down to the smallest detail. And now he had made his plans and every prospect pleased. Of course things could go wrong, he might have to make some changes. But that wouldn’t matter. New York has everything.

  New York has not got everything. The consequences of the absent amenity were most distressing for James Bond. After the scrambled eggs in the Edwardian Room, everything went hopelessly wrong and, instead of the dream programme, there had to be urgent and embarrassing telephone calls with London head-quarters and, and then only by the greatest of good luck, an untidy meeting at midnight beside the skating rink at Rockefeller Center with tears and threats of suicide from the English girl. And it was all New York’s fault! One can hardly credit the deficiency, but there is no Reptile House at the Central Park Zoo.