Bond 02 - Live and Let Die (3 page)

Bond eyed him narrowly and then grinned. He put the envelope away in his notecase.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘And thanks. I’ll try and spend it where it does most harm. I’m glad to have some working capital. It’s certainly good to know it’s been provided by the opposition.’

‘Fine,’ said Halloran, ‘and now, if you’ll forgive me, I’ll just write up my notes for the report I’ll have to put in. Have to remember to get a letter of thanks sent to Immigration and Customs and so forth for their co-operation. Routine.’

‘Go ahead,’ said Bond. He was glad to keep silent and gaze out at his first sight of America since the war. It was no waste of time to start picking up the American idiom again: the advertisements, the new car models and the prices of second-hand ones in the used-car lots; the exotic pungency of the road signs:
SOFT SHOULDERS – SHARP CURVES – SQUEEZE AHEAD – SLIPPERY WHEN WET;
the standard of driving; the number of women at the wheel, their menfolk docilely beside them; the men’s clothes; the way the women were doing their hair; the Civil Defence warnings:
IN CASE OF ENEMY ATTACK
 – 
KEEP MOVING
 – 
GET OFF BRIDGE
; the thick rash of television aerials and the impact of TV on hoardings and shop windows; the occasional helicopter; the public appeals for cancer and polio funds:
THE MARCH OF DIMES
 – all the small, fleeting impressions that were as important to his trade as are broken bark and bent twigs to the trapper in the jungle.

The driver chose the Triborough Bridge and they soared across the breath-taking span into the heart of up-town Manhattan, the beautiful prospect of New York hastening towards them until they were down amongst the hooting, teeming, petrol-smelling roots of the stressed-concrete jungle.

Bond turned to his companion.

‘I hate to say it,’ he said, ‘but this must be the fattest atomic bomb target on the whole face of the globe.’

‘Nothing to touch it,’ agreed Halloran. ‘Keeps me awake nights thinking what would happen.’

They drew up at the best hotel in New York, the St Regis, at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 55th Street. A saturnine middle-aged man in a dark blue overcoat and black homburg came forward behind the commissionaire. On the sidewalk, Halloran introduced him.

‘Mr Bond, meet Captain Dexter.’ He was deferential. ‘Can I pass him along to you now, Captain?’

‘Sure, sure. Just have his bags sent up. Room 2100. Top floor. I’ll go ahead with Mr Bond and see he has everything he wants.’

Bond turned to say goodbye to Halloran and thank him. For a moment Halloran had his back to him as he said something about Bond’s luggage to the commissionaire. Bond looked past him across 55th Street. His eyes narrowed. A black sedan, a Chevrolet, was pulling sharply out into the thick traffic, right in front of a Checker cab that braked hard, its driver banging his fist down on the horn and holding it there. The sedan kept going, just caught the tail of the green light, and disappeared north up Fifth Avenue.

It was a smart, decisive bit of driving, but what startled Bond was that it had been a negress at the wheel, a fine-looking negress in a black chauffeur’s uniform, and through the rear window he had caught a glimpse of the single passenger – a huge grey-black face which had turned slowly towards him and looked directly back at him, Bond was sure of it, as the car accelerated towards the Avenue.

Bond shook Halloran by the hand. Dexter touched his elbow impatiently.

‘We’ll go straight in and through the lobby to the elevators. Half-right across the lobby. And would you please keep your hat on, Mr Bond.’

As Bond followed Dexter up the steps into the hotel he reflected that it was almost certainly too late for these precautions. Hardly anywhere in the world will you find a negress driving a car. A negress acting as a chauffeur is still more extraordinary. Barely conceivable even in Harlem, but that was certainly where the car was from.

And the giant shape in the back seat? That grey-black face? Mister Big?

‘Hm,’ said Bond to himself as he followed the slim back of Captain Dexter into the elevator.

The elevator slowed up for the twenty-first floor.

‘We’ve got a little surprise ready for you, Mr Bond,’ said Captain Dexter, without, Bond thought, much enthusiasm.

They walked down the corridor to the corner room.

The wind sighed outside the passage windows and Bond had a fleeting view of the tops of other skyscrapers and, beyond, the stark fingers of the trees in Central Park. He felt far out of touch with the ground and for a moment a strange feeling of loneliness and empty space gripped his heart.

Dexter unlocked the door of No. 2100 and shut it behind them. They were in a small lighted lobby. They left their hats and coats on a chair and Dexter opened the door in front of them and held it for Bond to go through.

He walked into an attractive sitting-room decorated in Third Avenue ‘Empire’ – comfortable chairs and a broad sofa in pale yellow silk, a fair copy of an Aubusson on the floor, pale grey walls and ceiling, a bow-fronted French sideboard with bottles and glasses and a plated ice-bucket, a wide window through which the winter sun poured out of a Swiss-clear sky. The central heating was just bearable.

The communicating door with the bedroom opened.

‘Arranging the flowers by your bed. Part of the famous C.I.A. “Service With a Smile”.’ The tall thin young man came forward with a wide grin, his hand outstretched, to where Bond stood rooted with astonishment.

‘Felix Leiter! What the hell are you doing here?’

Bond grasped the hard hand and shook it warmly. ‘And what the hell are you doing in my bedroom, anyway? God! it’s good to see you. Why aren’t you in Paris? Don’t tell me they’ve put you on this job?’

Leiter examined the Englishman affectionately.

‘You’ve said it. That’s just exactly what they have done. What a break! At least, it is for me. C.I.A. thought we did all right together on the Casino job
¹
so they hauled me away from the Joint Intelligence chaps in Paris, put me through the works in Washington and here I am. I’m sort of liaison between the Central Intelligence Agency and our friends of the F.B.I.’ He waved towards Captain Dexter, who was watching this unprofessional ebullience without enthusiasm. ‘It’s their case, of course, at least the American end of it is, but as you know there are some big overseas angles which are C.I.A.’s territory, so we’re running it joint. Now you’re here to handle the Jamaican end for the British and the team’s complete. How does it look to you? Sit down and let’s have a drink. I ordered lunch directly I got the word you were downstairs and it’ll be on its way.’ He went over to the sideboard and started mixing a Martini.

‘Well, I’m damned,’ said Bond. ‘Of course that old devil M never told me. He just gives one the facts. Never tells one any good news. I suppose he thinks it might influence one’s decision to take a case or not. Anyway, it’s grand.’

Bond suddenly felt the silence of Captain Dexter. He turned to him.

‘I shall be very glad to be under your orders here, Captain,’ he said tactfully. ‘As I understand it, the case breaks pretty neatly into two halves. The first half lies wholly on American territory. Your jurisdiction, of course. Then it looks as if we shall have to follow it into the Caribbean. Jamaica. And I understand I am to take over outside United States territorial waters. Felix here will marry up the two halves so far as your government is concerned. I shall report to London through C.I.A. while I’m here, and direct to London, keeping C.I.A. informed, when I move to the Caribbean. Is that how you see it?’

Dexter smiled thinly. ‘That’s just about it, Mr Bond. Mr Hoover instructs me to say that he’s very pleased to have you along. As our guest,’ he added. ‘Naturally we are not in any way concerned with the British end of the case and we’re very happy that C.I.A. will be handling that with you and your people in London. Guess everything should go fine. Here’s luck,’ and he lifted the cocktail Leiter had put into his hand.

They drank the cold hard drink appreciatively, Leiter with a faintly quizzical expression on his hawk-like face.

There was a knock on the door. Leiter opened it to let in the bellboy with Bond’s suitcases. He was followed by two waiters pushing trolleys loaded with covered dishes, cutlery and snow-white linen, which they proceeded to lay out on a folding table.

‘Soft-shell crabs with tartare sauce, flat beef Hamburgers, medium-rare, from the charcoal grill, french-fried potatoes, broccoli, mixed salad with thousand-island dressing, ice-cream with melted butterscotch and as good a Liebfraumilch as you can get in America. Okay?’

‘It sounds fine,’ said Bond with a mental reservation about the melted butterscotch.

They sat down and ate steadily through each delicious course of American cooking at its rare best.

They said little, and it was only when the coffee had been brought and the table cleared away that Captain Dexter took the fifty-cent cigar from his mouth and cleared his throat decisively.

‘Mr Bond,’ he said, ‘now perhaps you would tell us what you know about this case.’

Bond slit open a fresh pack of King Size Chesterfields with his thumb-nail and, as he settled back in his comfortable chair in the warm luxurious room, his mind went back two weeks to the bitter raw day in early January when he had walked out of his Chelsea flat into the dreary half-light of a London fog.

1
This terrifying gambling case is described in the author’s
Casino Royale
.

T
HE GREY
Bentley convertible, the 1933 4½-litre with the Amherst-Villiers supercharger, had been brought round a few minutes earlier from the garage where he kept it and the engine had kicked directly he pressed the self-starter. He had turned on the twin fog lights and had driven gingerly along King’s Road and then up Sloane Street into Hyde Park.

M.’s Chief of Staff had telephoned at midnight to say that M. wanted to see Bond at nine the next morning. ‘Bit early in the day,’ he had apologized, ‘but he seems to want some action from somebody. Been brooding for weeks. Suppose he’s made up his mind at last.’

‘Any line you can give me over the telephone?’

‘A for Apple and C for Charlie,’ said the Chief of Staff, and rang off.

That meant that the case concerned Stations A and C, the sections of the Secret Service dealing respectively with the United States and the Caribbean. Bond had worked for a time under Station A during the war, but he knew little of C or its problems.

As he crawled beside the kerb up through Hyde Park, the slow drumbeat of his two-inch exhaust keeping him company, he felt excited at the prospect of his interview with M., the remarkable man who was then, and still is, head of the Secret Service. He had not looked into those cold, shrewd eyes since the end of the summer. On that occasion M. had been pleased.

‘Take some leave,’ he had said. ‘Plenty of leave. Then get some new skin grafted over the back of that hand. “Q” will put you on to the best man and fix a date. Can’t have you going round with that damn Russian trade-mark on you. See if I can find you a good target when you’ve got cleaned up. Good luck.’

The hand had been fixed, painlessly but slowly. The thin scars, the single Russian letter which stands for SCH, the first letter of
Spion
, a spy, had been removed and as Bond thought of the man with the stiletto who had cut them he clenched his hands on the wheel.

What was happening to the brilliant organization of which the man with the knife had been an agent, the Soviet organ of vengeance,
SMERSH
, short for
Smyert Spionam
 – Death to Spies? Was it still as powerful, still as efficient? Who controlled it now that Beria was gone? After the great gambling case in which he had been involved at Royale-les-Eaux, Bond had sworn to get back at them. He had told M. as much at that last interview. Was this appointment with M. to start him on his trail of revenge?

Bond’s eyes narrowed as he gazed into the murk of Regents Park and his face in the faint dashlight was cruel and hard.

He drew up in the mews behind the gaunt high building, handed his car over to one of the plain-clothes drivers from the pool and walked round to the main entrance. He was taken up in the lift to the top floor and along the thickly carpeted corridor he knew so well to the door next to M.’s. The Chief of Staff was waiting for him and at once spoke to M. on the intercom.

‘007’s here now, Sir.’

‘Send him in.’

The desirable Miss Moneypenny, M.’s all-powerful private secretary, gave him an encouraging smile and he walked through the double doors. At once the green light came on, high on the wall in the room he had left. M. was not to be disturbed as long as it burned.

A reading lamp with a green glass shade made a pool of light across the red leather top of the broad desk. The rest of the room was darkened by the fog outside the windows.

‘Morning, 007. Let’s have a look at the hand. Not a bad job. Where did they take the skin from?’