They passed through the dining room and into the ballroom, one man ahead of them, four more behind. Here the carpet gave way to acres of walnut and their feet tapped out a rhythm of sorts … more a funeral march than a waltz. Another door led into the bar – the Wolfe Bar – that Bond had already visited. Wolfe himself was waiting for them, settled into a velvet armchair with a low, dark wood table in front of him and two more chairs facing. Jean-Paul Scipio was sitting at the bar with a triangular glass lodged in his massive hand and surrounded by the glittering stones of his many rings. The liquid inside it was a creamy white with something – nutmeg perhaps – sprinkled on top. A brandy Alexander? His translator stood next to him. Bond felt himself being carefully examined as he moved into the room. The cannibal king savouring his next meal.
‘Sit down,’ Wolfe said. It was not an invitation. It was a command.
Bond chose one of the chairs opposite him. The American millionaire looked uncomfortable, out of sorts. This time, there was to be no ‘Jim’, no ‘baby girl’. He was wearing a grey flannel suit and a wide silk tie – it was all business tonight. Bond noted with interest that he was doing his best to avoid looking at Scipio. There was a sort of disdain, as if the Corsican gangster was a butler who had risen above his station by joining the family for drinks.
‘Irwin …’ Sixtine had gone straight over and was crouching beside him, her eyes wide and tearful. ‘I don’t understand what’s happening. I was just interested in your work. That’s all. I didn’t mean …’
‘I know who you are,’ Wolfe cut in. ‘According to Scipio, you’re as crooked as he is. From the very start I wondered why you were getting so close and cosy, but I was happy to play along with it. Why not? You’re an attractive woman. Well, you can put a sock in it now. I know your business and I’ve got a good idea what you were up to. It’s a damn shame because I don’t see how you can get off this boat alive, but we’ll come to that later. For now, take a seat. What can I get you to drink?’
‘I’ll have a bourbon with a little water and ice,’ Bond said. ‘But before that, there’s something you need to know. Miss Brochet has got nothing to do with me. We hadn’t even met until a few days ago. Send her back to the cabin and you and I can say what has to be said. But leave her out of it.’
‘She’s here and she’s staying,’ Wolfe replied, curtly. ‘I think the phrase is – she’s made her bed and she can lie in it.’
‘I’m not going anywhere,’ Sixtine muttered petulantly. ‘I’ve been stuck in that cabin long enough, thank you.’ She sat next to Bond. ‘And I’ll have a bourbon too.’
The barman started fixing the drinks. The translator was already whispering into Scipio’s ear, repeating everything that was being said. Scipio gazed ahead, his eyes fixed on Bond.
‘I guess you want to know what this is all about,’ Wolfe began.
‘I know what it’s all about,’ Bond said. ‘And for what it’s worth, so do my superiors. I think you’ll find there’s quite an unpleasant reception waiting for you when you dock in New York. You may have a nice boat and plenty of friends in high places but American customs officials take a pretty dim view of heroin smugglers and, at the end of the day, it turns out you’re just another dime-a-dozen petty criminal. Your business affairs must have taken a turn for the worse if that’s the only way you can think of to make money – but that’s not my problem. Wolfe America, Wolfe Europe … from now on it’s going to be Wolfe Alcatraz. Your business is finished and so are you.’
To his surprise, Wolfe broke into laughter. It was an unpleasant sound, like a dog barking. ‘Is that what you think?’ he demanded. ‘You think I’m in this for the money? Do you have any idea how much money I have? Do you really think I need to make any more of it? I’m seventy-three years old. Even if I was in perfect health, I’d only live another ten or fifteen years and as it is, I’ll be lucky to have half of that.’
He tapped the side of his head. ‘I have something inside my brain. The doctors call it an ependymal tumour, which strikes me as a very fancy name for something that’s growing where it shouldn’t. The fact is, it’s going to kill me. There’s nothing I can do, no treatment I can buy. I’ve spoken to doctors all over the world and they talk about drugs and surgery but I can see it in their eyes. I’m a goner and I might as well get used to it.
‘It was diagnosed a year ago and, you know, that was what set me thinking. I thought about the war and about the two boys I lost. It was a stupid war, an unnecessary war. What would it matter to us if the Nazis kicked you British in the ass? As a matter of fact, I actually knew President Woodrow Wilson when he brought in the Neutrality Acts back in the thirties and they were meant to keep us out of exactly this sort of situation. A European war … not an American war.’
The drinks arrived. ‘I’d like a cigarette, if you don’t mind,’ Bond said.
‘It’s a dirty habit but you might as well go ahead.’ Wolfe nodded and one of Scipio’s men handed Bond a packet of Lucky Strike.
Bond offered one to Sixtine, who shook her head. ‘America didn’t exactly enter the war,’ he said as he lit his cigarette. ‘Your country was attacked on 7 December 1941. Or maybe your brain tumour has knocked that particular detail out of your memory.’
‘I think I know my history rather better than you, Bond. Pearl Harbor was the end result of a series of hostile manoeuvres by the United States that began ten years before – when the Japs invaded Manchuria in 1931, to be precise. Once again, it was none of our business but our politicians didn’t approve. So what did we do? We threatened them with a blockade. That led to them dropping out of the League of Nations, the second Sino-Japanese War and eventually to the Tripartite Act with Germany and Italy. The Japs didn’t become our enemy overnight. It was our aggression and interference that drove them to it.
‘Anyway, Roosevelt didn’t need an excuse to go to war. He’d been wanting it all along. He had said as much in his commencement address to the University of Virginia on 10 June 1940 – they called it the “stab in the back” speech and in my view they got it exactly right. A few months later, he brought in the Lend-Lease Act, which went against everything that had gone before, providing your country, France and the Soviet Union with $50 billion worth of supplies. And of course, those supplies had to be protected by American ships and American lives. So don’t talk to me about Pearl Harbor. It was a European war and it should have stayed in Europe, but we threw ourselves into it long before December 1941.
‘We’re doing the same thing right now in Korea. You tell me – what has the North Korean People’s Army got to do with us and why should it bother us if a whole load of gooks want to kill each other over the 38th Parallel, a line that was created artificially in the first place and which doesn’t actually exist? But even now, while you and I sit here in first-class comfort, young American soldiers are dying far away from home leaving American parents feeling like I felt when they told me that my two boys had been cut down on the sand.’
Wolfe was sitting rigidly in his chair, breathing heavily. Bond could see a pulse throbbing on his forehead and it made him think of the malignant growth somewhere beneath. Wolfe had a glass of water. He lifted it and took a gulp.
‘You should take it easy,’ Bond said mildly. ‘You’re going to make yourself ill.’
‘I am ill.’
It amused Bond, how easy it was to rile the American.
‘I have been thinking a great deal about my legacy and what I can do to change the way my country is heading,’ Wolfe went on. There was a rasp in his voice. ‘We are coming to the belief that we can solve all the problems in the world and, as we become ever more powerful, with ever greater weapons, we don’t see what’s happening. We don’t see that we risk becoming monsters! Look at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Believe me, I have no love of the Japs. But I never thought I’d live to see a day when we would sit back and kill tens of thousands of people, including women and children, simply to assert our superiority.
‘Something has
to change. What the United States of America needs is a wake-up call, or what you might think of as an injection of common sense. And that is exactly what I am intending to give them.
‘I will not tell you how I came to meet Mr Scipio here or how I got into business with him. Working in Marseilles, I was obviously aware of the Corsican syndicates and their power. I learned a great deal about the narcotics business and it became clear to me that it’s going to change the world. In fact I would go so far as to say that, with or without my intervention, drug addiction is going to become the driving force of the twentieth century. People are going to get ill. People are going to need treatment. People are going to turn to crime. That’s the future whichever way you look at it – but maybe it can become a force for good. This is the thought that has occurred to me. If America becomes more inward-looking, if it is made to look after its own, then maybe it will re-examine its position in the world and as a result the world will become a better place.
‘On this ship are concealed more than 12,000 pounds of what is known as Number Four heroin – between 90 and 99 per cent pure. To put that into perspective, the average heroin addict uses less than half an ounce a day and in most cases the drug has been contaminated with many other substances. I do not intend to make money from this consignment, Mr Bond. That is why I laughed at your suggestion just now. What I am providing might be called the greatest loss-leader of all time. Although I have paid Scipio a fair market price for his product, I am going to pretty much give it away. Of course, this will eventually bankrupt me. It is financial suicide. But I am dying anyway and I have no friends and, thanks to Mr Roosevelt, no family.
‘Can you imagine the transformative effect that so much high-grade heroin is going to have on American society? There is already a huge network of dealers across the country, but soon the new product will flow relentlessly into every town and every community and at a price so ridiculously low that it will make at least one encounter with the drug irresistible. One, of course, will lead to another. I intend to create a nation of heroin addicts, Mr Bond, a million future customers for Mr Scipio.’
Bond saw the translator whisper this last sentence into Scipio’s ear and the man’s enormous face rearranged itself into a smile. Wolfe’s plan was hideous, an act of self-destructive lunacy, but whatever happened, Scipio would reap all the benefits. Wolfe had facilitated the manufacture of high-grade heroin. He had paid for it. And he had provided Scipio with a business opportunity that would last for generations.
‘It is, of course, only the weakest who will succumb to the temptation I am placing before them: the uneducated, the delinquent, the petty criminal. I find some consolation in that. Families who look after their young people won’t have anything to fear. But soon the streets will be littered with victims. As the prices rise and the supply begins to fall, there is sure to be an unprecedented crime wave. The government will be forced to concentrate all its resources on its own backyard and it simply will not have the money or the energy for another Omaha Beach, another Okinawa, another Pusan. It will start trying to help its young people instead of killing them, nursing itself rather than policing the world.
‘In doing this I will have built a memorial to my sons. At the same time, I will go to my grave in the knowledge that I have changed the future of American history so that other sons will be saved.’
He fell silent. The translator spoke for another few seconds, catching up with the end of the sentence. Finally, it was over.
Bond finished his bourbon. He glanced at Sixtine, who had listened to all this with growing incredulity and who was sitting very straight, her face pale.
‘I have to say, it will make interesting reading in the Lancet,’ Bond said, finally. ‘I wonder if doctors were aware that an ependymal tumour could actually cause the sufferer to lose every trace of his sanity?’ He leaned forward. ‘You really think that by condemning hundreds of thousands of young people to the living hell of heroin addiction, you can make your country a better place?’
‘I’m creating a tunnel. But it will lead them to the light.’
‘You’re creating a completely useless and self-destructive nightmare which will be of benefit to no one except Fat Boy over there, and he must be laughing at you from behind the folds of his face. It won’t work anyway. There were drug addicts all over America in the thirties and the forties. Marijuana, methamphetamines, cocaine … it made no difference to the entry to the war. You’re going to create chaos. That’s for sure. But you’re deluding yourself if you think any good is going to come out of it.’
Wolfe got stiffly to his feet. He looked drained. ‘Then think of it simply as revenge for what happened to my boys,’ he said. He turned to Scipio. ‘I’m done with him. You can do what you like. Don’t kill the woman … not yet. She and I have still got things to say.’
Scipio waited until Wolfe had walked out of the bar. Then he slid himself off the bar stool, carefully transferring his enormous weight to his legs. The translator handed him his shooting stick. Slowly, he took a few steps forward. The smile was still on his face.
‘Meester Bond,’ he said.
19
Pleasure … or Pain?
Scipio rapped out a command and his two men – Carlo and Simone – dragged one of the bar stools into the middle of the floor.
‘May I ask you please to sit down here?’ This time, the words were translated into English for Bond to understand.
Bond got slowly to his feet. Out on its own, in the middle of the polished wood floor, the stool had the same dark invitation as a gallows or an electric chair. It was made of brown leather on tubular steel with two low armrests. Bond didn’t like the look of where this was going, but he was surrounded by five men, at least two of them with guns, and knew he had no choice. Clamping down on a rising sense of unease, he walked the short distance over to the stool and sat down. Scipio stood in front of him. The two of them were now the same height.
But before anything could begin, Sixtine spoke.
‘Scipio!’ she said. ‘You know who I am. You know how much money I’m worth. Listen to me now.’ She waited for the translator to catch up. The light glimmered in his wire-frame spectacles as he spoke, masking his eyes. He was wearing the same drab suit and narrow tie as before. As ever, he was standing close to Scipio, translating now from English to Corsican, delivering the message while seeming to take no interest whatsoever in its contents or anything else that was happening around him.
‘You have made a mistake working with Irwin Wolfe,’ Sixtine went on. ‘You know that he’s sick. He’s dying so he doesn’t care what happens in the future – but he can still bring you down with him. But it’s not too late. If you will let Mr Bond and myself leave, I will pay you 100,000 American dollars. You can have the money in diamonds or any currency that you prefer. There is also the heroin on this boat … more than five tons of it. Wolfe wants to give it away but you could sell it on top of what he has already given you. You are an intelligent man. Surely you can see that you have no need for Irwin Wolfe. Let us go. Get on with your business. You’re making the wrong enemies here.’
Sixtine fell silent. A few moments later, the translator finished her last statement and stood there, waiting for what might come next. Scipio shook his head, the red crease of his old wound showing briefly as his chins swivelled left and right.
‘Innò. Sò Corsu!’
‘No,’ the translator explained. ‘I am a Corsican. In my country, a man’s word is his bond. Do not speak to me again, madame.’ The translator paused and Scipio waggled an elephantine finger in her direction. ‘We sat together in a bar in Marseilles and it was then that I warned you … you should stay away from this part of the world. It is regretted … it is greatly to be regretted that you did not take my advice.’
Scipio turned to his men and spoke rapidly in his high-pitched whispering voice. The translator listened in silence, then addressed Sixtine directly. ‘Mr Scipio has given instructions for you to be dragged out
of here and locked up if you speak again,’ he explained with a note of apology. ‘You will be hurt quite significantly.’ He turned to Bond. ‘He also wishes you to know that Madame 16 will be shot if you make any move at all. You must sit where you are and take what is given to you. Do you understand?’
‘Please tell Mr Scipio that I understand completely and that whatever happens to me in this room will be paid back tenfold. I work for serious people. They know I am here. You have already killed one of our agents. If you kill me, you will spend the rest of your life running.’ He turned a cold eye on Scipio. ‘Or in your case, waddling. I hope you know the Corsican for that word.’
Bond could not tell how much of what he had just said was translated. Just for once, the translator looked discomfited as he repeated the lines. But Scipio was unconcerned, the great, round ball of his head pale and impassive against the coloured bottles that lined the bar.
‘The last time we met, I also gave you a warning, Mr Bond. I said the same thing that I said to her … to madame. Stay out of my affairs. To be honest with you, I was quite expecting you to ignore me. It may surprise you, but I was also very pleased. I did not think for one minute that you will … that you would return to England and I hoped also that you and I would meet again and that on a second occasion I would be able to do what I wished, without restraint. We have arrived at that occasion. You interest me, Mr Bond. You are young, good-looking, resourceful … you are in many ways a first-class secret agent. You are not unlike the man who was here before … your predecessor. I killed him. I shot him three times. But I never got to know him. This time it is going to be very different.’
Scipio glanced at his translator and rapped out a sentence.
Forever and a Day Page 20
