James Bond Anthology (322 page)

‘It’ll almost certainly lead to trouble. The locals’ll want to play – they’re terrific gamblers here. There’ll be incidents. Coloured people’ll be turned away from the doors for one reason or another. Then the Opposition party’ll get hold of that and raise hell about colour bars and so on. With all the money flying about, the unions’ll push wages through the roof. It can all add up to a fine stink. The atmosphere’s too damn peaceful around here. This’ll be a cheap way of raising plenty of hell. That’s what your people want, isn’t it? Give the islands the hot foot one after another?’

There was another brief silence. Mr Hendriks obviously didn’t like the idea. He said so, but obliquely: ‘What you are saying, Mister S., is very interesting. But is it not that these troubles you envisage will endanger our monies? However, I will report your inquiry and inform you at once. It is possible that my superiors will be sympathetic. Who can be telling? Now there is this question of a new Number Six. Are you having anyone in mind?’

‘I think we want a good man from South America. We need a guy to oversee our operations in British Guiana. We oughta get smartened up in Venezuela. How come we never got further with that great scheme for blocking the Maracaibo Bar? Like robbing a blind man, given a suitable block ship. Just the threat of it would make the oil companies shell out – that’s a joke by the way – and go on shelling by way of protection. Then, if this narcotics spiel is going to be important, we can’t do without Mexico. How about Mr Arosio of Mexico City?’

‘I am not knowing this gentleman.’

‘Rosy? Oh, he’s a great guy. Runs the Green Light Transportation System. Drugs and girls into L.A. Never been caught yet. Reliable operator. Got no affiliates. Your people’ll know about him. Why not check with them and then we’ll put it up to the others? They’ll go along with our say-so.’

‘Is good. And now, Mister S. Have you anything to report about your own employer? On his recent visit to Moscow, I understand that he expressed satisfaction with your efforts in this area. It is a matter for gratification that there should be such close co-operation between his subversive efforts and our own. Both our chiefs are expecting much in the future from our union with the Mafia. Myself I am doubting. Mr Gengerella is undoubtedly a valuable link, but it is my impression that these people are only being activated by money. What is it that you are thinking?’

‘You’ve said it, Mr Hendriks. In the opinion of my chief, the Mafia’s first and only consideration is the Mafia. It has always been so and it always will be so. My Mister C. is not expecting great results in the States. Even the Mafia can’t buck the anti-Cuban feeling there. But he thinks we can achieve plenty in the Caribbean by giving them odd jobs to do. They can be very effective. It would certainly oil the wheels if your people would use the Mafia as a pipeline for this narcotics business. They’ll turn your million-dollar investment into ten. They’ll grab the nine out of it of course. But that’s not peanuts, and it’ll tie them in to you. Think you could arrange that? It’ll give Leroy G. some good news to report when he gets home. As for Mister C., he seems to be going along all right. Flora was a body-blow but, largely thanks to the Americans leaning on Cuba the way they do, he’s kept the country together. If the Americans once let up on their propaganda and needling and so forth, perhaps even make a friendly gesture or two, all the steam’ll go out of the little man. I don’t often see him. He leaves me alone. Likes to keep his nose clean, I guess. But I get all the co-operation I need from the D.S.S. Okay? Well let’s go see if the folks are ready to move. It’s eleven-thirty and the Bloody Bay Belle is due to be on her way at twelve. Guess it’s going to be quite a fun day. Pity our Chiefs aren’t going to be along to see the limey eye get his chips.’

‘Ha!’ said Mr Hendriks noncommittally.

James Bond moved away from the door. He heard Mr Scaramanga’s pass key in the lock. He looked up and yawned.

Mr Scaramanga and Mr Hendriks looked down at him. Their expressions were vaguely interested and reflective. It was as if he were a bit of steak and they were wondering whether to have it done rare or medium rare.

13 | HEAR THE TRAIN BLOW!

At twelve o’clock they all assembled in the lobby. Scaramanga had added a broad-brimmed white Stetson to his immaculate tropical attire. He looked like the smartest plantation owner in the South. Mr Hendriks wore his usual stuffy suit, now topped with a grey Homburg. Bond thought that he should have grey suede gloves and an umbrella. The four hoods were wearing calypso shirts outside their slacks. Bond was pleased. If they were carrying guns in their waistbands, the shirts would hinder the draw. Cars were drawn up outside with Scaramanga’s Thunderbird in the lead. Scaramanga walked up to the desk. Nick Nicholson was standing washing his hands in invisible soap and looking helpful. ‘All set? Everything loaded on the train? Green Harbour been told? Okay, then. Where’s that sidekick of yours, that man Travis? Haven’t seen him around today.’

Nick Nicholson looked serious. ‘He got an abscess in his tooth, sir. Real bad. Had to send him in to Sav’ La Mar to have it out. He’ll be okay by this afternoon.’

‘Too bad. Dock him half a day’s pay. No room for sleepers on this outfit. We’re short-handed as it is. Should have had his snappers attended to before he took the job on. ’Kay?’

‘Very good, Mr Scaramanga. I’ll tell him.’

Mr Scaramanga turned to the waiting group. ‘Okay, fellers. Now this is the spiel. We drive a mile down the road to the station. We get aboard this little train. Quite an outfit that. Feller by the name of Lucius Beebe had it copied for the Thunderbird company from the engine and rolling stock on the little old Denver, South Park and Pacific line. Okay. So we steam along this old cane-field line about twenty miles to Green Island Harbour. Plenty birds, bush rats, crocs in the rivers. Mebbe we get a little hunting. Have some fun with the hardware. All you guys got your guns with you? Fine, fine. Champagne lunch at Green Island and the girls and the music’ll be there to keep us happy. After lunch we get aboard the
Thunder Bird
, big Chris-Craft, and take a cruise along to Lucea, that’s a little township down the coast, and see if we can catch our dinner. Those that don’t want to fish can play stud. Right? Then back here for drinks. Okay? Everyone satisfied? Any suggestions? Then let’s go.’

Bond was told to get in the back of the car. They set off. Once again that offered neck! Crazy not to take him now! But it was open country with no cover and there were four guns riding behind. The odds simply weren’t good enough. What was the plan for his removal? During the ‘hunting’ presumably. James Bond smiled grimly to himself. He was feeling happy. He wouldn’t have been able to explain the emotion. It was a feeling of being keyed up, wound taut. It was the moment, after twenty passes, when you got a hand you could bet on – not necessarily win, but bet on. He had been after this man for over six weeks. Today, this morning perhaps, was to come the pay-off he had been ordered to bring about. It was win or lose. The odds? Foreknowledge was playing for him. He was more heavily forearmed than the enemy knew. But the enemy had the big battalions on their side. There were more of them. And, taking only Scaramanga, perhaps more talent. Weapons? Again leaving out the others, Scaramanga had the advantage. The long-barrelled Colt .45 would be a fraction slower on the draw, but its length of barrel would give it more accuracy than the Walther automatic. Rate of fire? The Walther should have the edge – and the first empty chamber of Scaramanga’s gun, if it hadn’t been discovered, would be an additional bonus. The steady hand? The cool brain? The sharpness of the lust to kill? How did they weigh up? Probably nothing to choose on the first two. Bond might be a shade trigger-happy – of necessity. That he must watch. He must damp down the fire in his belly. Get ice-cold. In the lust to kill, perhaps he was the strongest. Of course. He was fighting for his life. The other man was just amusing himself – providing sport for his friends, displaying his potency, showing off. That was good! That might be decisive! Bond said to himself that he must increase the other man’s unawareness, his casual certitude, his lack of caution. He must be the P. G. Wodehouse Englishman, the limey of the cartoons. He must play easy to take. The adrenalin coursed into James Bond’s bloodstream. His pulse rate began to run a fraction high. He felt it on his wrist. He breathed deeply and slowly to bring it down. He found that he was sitting forward, tensed. He sat back and tried to relax. All of his body relaxed except his right hand. This was in the control of someone else. Resting on his right thigh, it still twitched slightly from time to time like the paw of a sleeping dog chasing rabbits. He put it into his coat pocket and watched a turkey buzzard a thousand feet up, circling. He put himself into the mind of the ‘John Crow’, watching out for a squashed toad or a dead bush rat. The circling buzzard had found its offal. It came lower and lower. Bond wished it ‘bon appétit’. The predator in him wished the scavenger a good meal. He smiled at the comparison between them. They were both following a scent. The main difference was that the John Crow was a protected bird. No one would shoot back at it when it made its final dive. Amused by his thoughts, Bond’s right hand came out of his pocket and lit a cigarette for him, quietly and obediently. It had stopped going off chasing rabbits on its own.

The station was a brilliant mock-up from the Colorado narrow-gauge era – a low building in faded clapboard ornamented with gingerbread along its eaves. Its name ‘Thunder-bird Halt’ was in old-style ornamental type, heavily seriffed. Advertisements proclaimed ‘Chew Roseleaf Fine Cut Warranted Finest Virginia Leaf’, ‘Trains Stop for all Meals’, ‘No Checks Accepted’. The engine, gleaming in black and yellow varnish and polished brass, was a gem. It stood, panting quietly in the sunshine, a wisp of black smoke curling up from the tall stack behind the big brass headlight. The engine’s name ‘The Belle’ was on a proud brass plate on the gleaming black barrel and its number, ‘No. 1’, on a similar plate below the headlight. There was one carriage, an open affair with padded foam-rubber seats and a daffodil Surrey roof of fringed canvas to keep off the sun, and then the brake van, also in black and yellow, with a resplendent gilt-armed chair behind the conventional wheel of the brake. It was a wonderful toy even down to the old-fashioned whistle which now gave a sharp admonitory blast.

Scaramanga was in ebullient form. ‘Hear the train blow, folks! All aboard!’ There was an anticlimax. To Bond’s dismay he took out his golden pistol, pointed it at the sky and pressed the trigger. He hesitated only momentarily and fired again. The deep boom echoed back from the wall of the station and the station-master, resplendent in old-fashioned uniform, looked nervous. He pocketed the big silver turnip watch he had been holding and stood back obsequiously, the green flag now drooping at his side. Scaramanga checked his gun. He looked thoughtfully at Bond and said, ‘All right, my friend. Now then, you get up front with the driver.’

Bond smiled happily. ‘Thanks. I’ve always wanted to do that since I was a child. What fun!’

‘You’ve said it,’ said Scaramanga. He turned to the others. ‘And you, Mr Hendriks. In the first seat behind the coal-tender, please. Then Sam and Leroy. Then Hal and Louie. I’ll be up back in the brake van. Good place to watch out for game.’Kay?’

Everybody took their seats. The station-master had recovered his nerve and went through his ploy with the watch and the flag. The engine gave a triumphant hoot and, with a series of diminishing puffs, got under way and they bowled off along the three-foot gauge line that disappeared, as straight as an arrow, into a dancing shimmer of silver.

Bond read the speed gauge. It said twenty. For the first time he paid attention to the driver. He was a villainous-looking Rastafari in dirty khaki overalls with a sweat rag round his forehead. A cigarette drooped from between the thin moustache and the straggling beard. He smelled quite horrible. Bond said, ‘My name’s Mark Hazard. What’s yours?’

‘Rass, man! Ah doan talk wid buckra.’

The expression ‘rass’ is Jamaican for ‘shove it’. ‘Buckra’ is a tough colloquialism for ‘white man’ .

Bond said equably, ‘I thought part of your religion was to love thy neighbour.’

The Rasta gave the whistle halyard a long pull. When the shriek had died away, he simply said ‘Sheeit’, kicked the furnace door open and began shovelling coal.

Bond looked surreptitiously round the cabin. Yes. There it was! The long Jamaican cutlass, this one filed to an inch blade with a deadly point. It was on a rack by the man’s hand. Was this the way he was supposed to go? Bond doubted it. Scaramanga would do the deed in a suitably dramatic fashion and one that would give him an alibi. Second executioner would be Hendriks. Bond looked back over the low coal-tender. Hendriks’s eyes, bland and indifferent, met his. Bond shouted above the iron clang of the engine, ‘Great fun, what?’ Hendriks’s eyes looked away and back again. Bond stooped so that he could see under the top of the Surrey. All the other four men were sitting motionless, their eyes also fixed on Bond. Bond waved a cheerful hand. There was no response. So they had been told! Bond was a spy in their midst and this was his last ride. In mobese, he was ‘going to be hit’. It was an uncomfortable feeling having those ten enemy eyes watching him like ten gun barrels. Bond straightened himself. Now the top half of his body, like the iron ‘man’ in a pistol range, was above the roof of the Surrey and he was looking straight down the flat yellow surface to where Scaramanga sat on his solitary throne, perhaps twenty feet away, with all his body in full view. He also was looking down the little train at Bond – the last mourner in the funeral cortège behind the cadaver that was James Bond. Bond waved a cheery hand and turned back. He opened his coat and got a moment’s reassurance from the cool butt of his gun. He felt in his trouser pocket. Three spare magazines. Ah, well! He’d take as many of them as he could with him. He flipped down the co-driver’s seat and sat on it. No point in offering a target until he had to. The Rasta flicked his cigarette over the side and lit another. The engine was driving herself. He leant against the cabin wall and looked at nothing.