by John Gardner
She had a very thin hand which shook slightly as she took the photograph and peered at it as though it were a holy relic.
‘No. No, I don’t recognise her. Should I?’
‘Only if it happened to be your old friend Jenny Mo.’
‘Oh, that’s not Jenny. She was rather intense-looking and wore big, black-rimmed glasses.’
‘Good.’ Bond handed the picture back to Rushia. ‘Just have this destroyed, my good fellow. Oh, and we’ll be heading for JFK tomorrow night. Nine fifteen to the city of Saint Francis.’
‘Make a nice change. I’ll fix it, even if they have to offload some poor tourist.’ He ran a long finger down the side of his nose. ‘A word in private, your honour.’
They stepped over to the door.
‘Got a couple of Mickey Finns here for the lady.’ Ed spoke out of the corner of his mouth, a parody of every Hollywood jail movie.
‘How fast, and how long?’
‘’Bout two minutes and twenty-four hours.’
‘Okay. Would you tell whoever’s going to clean up that we will be away by seven tonight.’
‘Anything else I can do? Massage your back? Wash the dishes? Sing a coupla choruses of “Oh dear, what a calamity”?’
‘Just keep doing what you’re good at, Ed.’ Bond took the pills in their little silver foil packet and showed him out of the door.
‘Time for sleep,’ he announced when Rushia had finally gone. ‘Get Myra to bed, then call me in. You’re pretty wired – strung up – Myra. I’ve got a couple of pills that will make certain you’ll rest.’
She looked up in alarm. ‘You’re not going to poison me! No!’
‘NO!’ Chi-Chi said firmly. ‘Come on, let’s get you to bed, Myra. Nobody’s going to poison you. We all need rest, and you’re going to have problems sleeping.’
Twenty minutes later, Chi-Chi came out of the master bedroom. ‘Give me a glass of water, James. I think she’ll let me do it.’
‘I wish it was an injection. Safer. But make sure she swallows them. Should take two minutes max.’
It took under sixty seconds, Chi-Chi told him when she came back. ‘Went out like a candle in a hurricane.’
‘Well, we’ve certainly had a long bedtime story tonight. I wonder how much of it was a fairytale?’
Chi-Chi smiled up at Bond, resting a hand on his shoulder. ‘I suppose we’ll find out eventually, but now, husband, how about bed?’
‘You hussy.’ Bond smiled down at her. ‘But can I take a raincheck? I have one hell of a headache.’
She pouted. ‘Oh, I really thought we worked well as a team.’
‘We do, but I’ll feel safer if I lie across the door with a gun in my hand.’
‘Okay, but you don’t know what you’re missing.’
‘Oh, I think I do.’
Myra was still dead to the world when they left the apartment shortly before seven that night. Both had managed eight hours of sleep, Chi-Chi having taken over from Bond to, as he put it, lie across the door. They had eaten, showered and changed. Just before leaving, Bond stripped down his ASP 9mm and unlocked the shielded false bottom of the briefcase – his usual way of carrying arms illegally through airport security.
They had called for a limo from the nearby firm of Ryan & Sons whom Bond had used on other visits to New York. They were discreet, punctual and always friendly. They also did not know his real name, though all the drivers recognised his face. Tonight they had drawn the Ryan son, George, who pleasantly spent the ride out to JFK telling them the city was going to the dogs, how parts of the roadways were caving in, how a friend had been mugged and how the police didn’t seem to do much about it. ‘Look,’ he pointed out of the window, ‘see that guy there with the TV on his shoulder? Betcha he never bought that. He’s stealing that and nobody’ll do anything about it.’
Bond was glad to see Rushia’s car not too far behind them. He leaned forward. ‘George, you mind if I close the partition?’
‘You go ahead, sir. You do what you like. I won’t peek!’ The driver gave a jovial chuckle.
Bond leaned back, his shoulder touching Chi-Chi’s shoulder: ‘Now, tell me the story of your life,’ he said with a smile.
‘Didn’t they give you my dossier? It’s all in there.’
‘They told me you were a Cantonese speaker . . .’
‘And a few dialects. You see, they should have given you my file.’
‘Okay. So you tell me.’
‘Fourth generation American. Joined the US Navy to see the world and saw nothing but the inside of offices. They gave me a commission. My father was very proud, but the man I was going to marry was humiliated – it was some foolish business to do with class – and he would not go through with the contract.’
‘And you still love him?’
‘Until quite recently, yes. Now I see how foolish I was even to grieve. I know that it was my vanity crying, not my heart.’
‘They tell me it takes three years to get over a really broken heart and accept the facts.’
‘You are a chauvinist pig, James. For men, maybe only three years; for women it can be much longer – if ever.’
He laid a hand on her arm. ‘You may be right, my dear. A very wise man once told me that if a woman stopped loving you, there was nothing you could do about it except put your hands in your pockets and walk away. I believe the same is also true for women.’
‘It’s a blow to pride, to vanity. But that’s all one now. You still want to hear my life story?’
‘You’re only giving me the later parts.’
‘Okay, maybe I don’t want you to know about my terrible teenage days when I ran riot with friends, smoked pot, stayed out all night in line for a Who concert, lost my virginity at sixteen . . .’
‘Beat you by almost eighteen months.’ Though Bond said it lightly enough, he was slightly concerned about Chi-Chi. He had known many good women operatives, but they only remained good if they did not carry around a great load of what he liked to think of as ‘emotional baggage’. He hoped that Sue Chi-Ho did not have a cabin trunk of emotions chained to her ankle. At last he said, ‘Well, you got through that. We all go through it.’
‘Some never come out the other side.’ She turned down the corners of what Bond appreciated as a wicked little mouth. ‘I had ten friends – ten who never made it. From pot to hard drugs, to theft and death.’
Bond nodded. Looking at her now he realised, as though for the first time, that beneath the fragility she was as hard as tempered steel. ‘The drug problem’s going to be the downfall of many empires, just as lead poisoning was the trigger to the fall of the Roman Empire. But, as to your own adolescent difficulties, you did get through them. If you kick all the bad habits, the only problem is if adolescence stays with you, makes you moody, short-fused and, well, downright immature. You’re certainly not that.’
‘Thank you.’ Was there a hint of uncertainty in her voice?
‘So you were commissioned?’ he prompted.
‘Naval Intelligence for two years. Then an Agency talent spotter gave me an audition. The rest, as they say, is history.’ She quite suddenly looked up at Bond, her eyes mirroring a hint of anxiety. ‘This business? It is going to be all right, James, isn’t it?’
‘As long as you remember to call me Peter, and don’t forget you’re Jenny . . .’
‘And married to you, yes.’ She ran the tip of her tongue along the lips which Bond was finding more attractive every minute. He looked up to see they were just turning on to the airport ramp.
At the American Airlines desk, the tickets were ready for them. ‘There’s no charge, sir,’ the clerk told Bond. ‘They’ve been paid for.’ They checked in their luggage, only retaining the briefcase and the Scribner’s canvas bag – a relic of the old days when the now defunct business was one of the best book stores in New York.
They passed through the security and Bond made his excuses, going to the nearest restroom. Inside one of the cubicles, he worked th
e combination lock on the briefcase, removed the shielded false bottom and retrieved his pistol. In under two minutes he had reassembled the weapon, slipped a magazine into the butt, cocked it, activated the safety and slid it into his waistband, pushing it down firmly behind his right hip. Chi-Chi was waiting patiently for him and together they started the long walk down to the gate.
Back on West 56th Street, two unmarked cars and an ambulance drew up at the apartment building some ten minutes after Bond and Chi-Chi left. They got hold of the superintendent claiming there had been an emergency call saying a woman was unconscious in 4B. The super unlocked the apartment for them, and Myra, still unconscious, was taken down to the ambulance on a stretcher, causing the usual little morbid crowd to gather.
What the crowd did not see was one of the men from the accompanying cars loitering in the apartment until the ambulance rescue squad people had left. He went rapidly back into the bedroom and, using pillows and blankets from one of the closets and a wig he had brought for the purpose, constructed the outline of a body asleep in the bed. He was the last man out.
An hour later, as Chi-Chi and Bond were walking to the AA departure gate, a car drew up across the street from the apartment block. The driver stayed where he was and his passenger, a greying, respectable-looking man wearing a long raincoat over his suit, walked over to the building. He did not spend time calling the superintendent, but inserted a pick-lock into the door, and had it open in thirty seconds.
He carefully closed it behind him, then quietly went up the stairs to 4B, where the door yielded to his expertise in less time than the one downstairs. He wore gloves and opened up quietly, reaching under his raincoat to reveal a wicked-looking Skorpion machine-pistol, fitted with a noise suppression unit.
Slowly he crossed to the master bedroom, opened the door and fired four short bursts of 9mm rounds into the ‘body’ with a sound like a small child idly running an old glove along a row of railings.
He did not wait to look at his work. He had been told to kill quickly and efficiently and get away without being detected. Within minutes he was crossing the road to the anonymous car which drove away with great care.
Neither the driver nor his murderous passenger even noticed the battered Buick that had seen better days pull out and follow them about two cars back in the traffic.
They had almost made it to the gate and Chi-Chi was just wondering aloud if the movie would be any good, when the two men came up on either side of them. The one next to Bond had Oriental looks, and was a very large man, the one who began to keep pace with Chi-Chi was shorter and Caucasian.
‘Just keep walking past the gate, Mr Abelard,’ the big one said.
‘And please don’t make a fuss, this is for your security.’ The smaller man’s accent could have passed for British.
‘My name is Ding,’ the large one continued without breaking his stride. ‘My friends call me Bone Bender Ding. My partner, here, beside the lovely lady is called Fox, but he answers to other, less salubrious names. Mr Lee felt it safer to send his private jet down for you both. That will make certain that nobody’s on your tails, if you’ll excuse the expression, ma’am.’
‘And what if we prefer American Airlines?’ asked Bond.
‘Oh, Mr Lee would be very upset, sir. Also it would become unpleasant and Mr Lee cannot abide unpleasantness. Now, straight down to the end of this walkway. We have a car there ready to take you out to the jet.’
10
FLIGHT OF DECEPTION
Ed Rushia was already in line, at the gate, waiting to board AA 15 when he saw Bond and Chi-Chi pass down the long walkway. An unobservant moron would have noticed them, he thought, for their companions were highly visible – the very large, silk-suited Chinese with the arms of a gorilla and the smaller white man whose eyes constantly moved as though looking for trouble. He acted immediately, heading for the nearest payphone and using an Amex card to dial the number Bond had contacted so successfully during the night. The usual response came from Curve’s Deli, and he immediately asked to be patched through to control.
In fact, the mythical Curve’s Deli was located in a large room some seventeen storeys up in an old apartment building on Lexington Avenue. The floor was bare wood, the walls could have done with several coats of paint and there was an all-pervading smell of damp. But these things were overshadowed by one wall which dominated the place. A series of long tables held a tall bank of sophisticated radio and electronics gear plus a portable automatic switchboard. There were four high-backed office chairs set at intervals along the entire working area and one man sat in the centre of this array while another lay asleep on a camp bed tucked into the opposite corner.
John Grant, the CIA officer who, with two other agents, had assisted on the aircraft carrier, was in charge of monitoring what they had dubbed Operation Curve. This New York electronics room was capable of patching through a plethora of information between the various protagonists and Grant’s team, which still sat tight with M’s people on the Nimitz class carrier, now back and anchored off Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay.
It was Grant himself who was on duty and took the patched through call from Rushia.
‘They’re not boarding,’ the Navy Intelligence man reported with unusual brusqueness.
‘Yes, I know.’ Grant was so clear on the secure line that it was difficult to believe that he was over three thousand miles away. ‘We’ve got a van out at Kennedy. They’ve just reported in. The homers have moved down to the end of the walkway. There’s also information concerning a private corporate jet parked off the end of the terminal spoke. Hang on, Rushia, there’s something else coming in.’
Rushia waited, glancing back to the boarding gate for AA15. The line was moving and he would have to get a decision whether to board or not.
‘Their luggage has been off-loaded from the American Airlines flight.’ Grant’s voice was a shade more tense.
‘You’ve got guys in there?’
‘We’ve got ’em everywhere . . .’
‘Well, what do you want me to do? Go and grab a bagel, book a flight to Jallaboo or take the AA15?’
‘They have to be heading this way. Take the AA and check in as soon as you reach SFO.’ SFO is the airport designator code for San Francisco International.
Rushia signed off and ambled back to the gate while Grant continued to give instructions to the New York officer. ‘You say the corporate jet’s a Gulfstream II?’
‘Grumman Gulfstream II, that’s the jet version, in the livery of a corporation called Silver Service, Inc.’
‘Okay, I’ll start the checks on Silver Service. You get your hooks on to that corporate’s flight plan and make damned certain he sticks to it. I don’t care if you have to go through the military satellites, the COMSATS, anything, but I want that bird tracked through every cloud. I want to know if it wanders one degree off course and I want to know if the captain farts. You’ve got enough staff?’
‘Only Dogface Two, and he did the day shift. I’m going to need about four extra sets of hands in here if we’re to do the job right. We’ve sleeping facilities for eight so I figure that we’re a tad undermanned.’
‘You’ve got six extra pairs as from midnight. I’ll see to it.’ Grant shut down and made two rapid telephone calls, then left his own Number Two in charge – a former field agent built like the proverbial brick wash-house and known to all as Mac. In M’s cabin, Grant found the old admiral talking with Bill Tanner and Franks. The doctor, Orr, and Q’ute had already left for London.
‘Your man and the girl’ve been cut out by a couple of Brokenclaw’s stalking-horses,’ Grant announced.
‘Serious?’ M clamped his pipe firmly between his teeth.
‘From the description, it’s probably a Chinese heavy known as Bone Bender Ding who’d rip out his own mother’s tongue if the money was right. The other’s a little guy called Fox. Ex-Special Forces and answers to various nicknames – “Gory” Fox; “Fatal” Fox, take your pick; h
e’s as pleasant as an asp in your pants.’
‘You do have them under surveillance?’
‘I’m having them tracked all the way sir. But I don’t have to remind you what you already know of Brokenclaw Lee. He appears to have the ability to move entire mountains without anyone even noticing until it’s done.’
M sucked at his pipe. ‘Grant,’ he tried to sound diffident, though it did not quite come off, ‘we’re damned grateful for what you fellows are doing, y’know. Damned grateful. Bond can be a difficult cuss at times, but he’s my best agent. Nobody else can touch him when it comes to jobs like this.’
‘And this,’ Bill Tanner said quietly, ‘is like old-fashioned intelligence work. I was just thinking that we desperately need agents to cope with the turmoil of transition in Europe, and here we are, half a world away, dealing with stolen plans. It’s like a pre-World War I scenario.’
M made a noise which sounded like an embarrassed clearing of the throat. At the same time he glanced at Grant who was looking furtive. ‘What’s your Chief of Staff’s clearance, sir?’ he asked.
‘Stratospheric, though I’d hoped to keep the darker side out of the way. You think it’s gone too far for that now?’
‘I think within forty-eight hours we’ll know exactly how what you call the “darker side” is going to fall.’
Tanner was quite used to being educated further and given classified information long after an operation had begun to run. It was known in the trade as ‘need-to-know’. ‘There’s more than just Lords and Lords Day?’ he asked.
‘Possibly, Tanner. Quite possibly. Though the Lords device is about as classified as anyone can get, because the whole safety of the United States’ and our own fleets depends on it. I fear there’s a lot of woolly-headed thinking going on about the world’s future. The Forces of the Western Alliance have a long way to go yet. But, be that as it may, there is the possibility of a further threat connected with this man Brokenclaw Lee.’
Tanner steepled his fingers and waited. It was the old interrogator’s technique, waiting things out until the suspect became talkative, uneasy with the silence.
