James Bond Anthology (74 page)

He turned his head and looked at Gala. For the first time he saw the ugly bruise behind her left ear. He gave her a smile of encouragement and she smiled wryly back.

Drax spoke through the cigar smoke: ‘There is not much more to tell,’ he said. ‘During the year that I was being pushed from one hospital to the next I made my plans down to the smallest detail. They consisted quite simply of revenge on England for what she had done to me and to my country. It gradually became an obsession. I admit it. Every day during the year of the rape and destruction of my country, my hatred and scorn for the English grew more bitter.’ The veins on Drax’s face started to swell and suddenly he pounded on the desk and shouted across at them, looking with bulging eyes from one to the other. ‘I loathe and despise you all. You swine! Useless, idle, decadent fools, hiding behind your bloody white cliffs while other people fight your battles. Too weak to defend your colonies, toadying to America with your hats in your hands. Stinking snobs who’ll do anything for money. Hah!’ he was triumphant, ‘I knew that all I needed was money and the façade of a gentleman. Gentleman!
Pfui Teufel!
To me a gentleman is just someone I can take advantage of. Those bloody fools in Blades for instance. Moneyed oafs. For months I took thousands of pounds off them, swindled them right under their noses until you came along and upset the apple-cart.’

Drax’s eyes narrowed. ‘What put you on to the cigarette-case?’ he asked sharply.

Bond shrugged his shoulders. ‘My eyes,’ he said indifferently.

‘Ah well,’ said Drax, ‘perhaps I was a bit careless that night. But where was I? Ah yes, in hospital. And the good doctors were so anxious to help me find out who I really was.’ He let out a roar of laughter. ‘It was easy. So easy.’ His eyes became cunning. ‘From the identities they offered me so helpfully I came upon the name of Hugo Drax. What a coincidence! From Drache to Drax! Tentatively I thought it
might
be me. They were very proud. Yes, they said,
of course
it is you. The doctors triumphantly forced me into his shoes. I put them on and walked out of the hospital in them and I walked round London looking for someone to kill and rob. And one day, in a little office high above Piccadilly, a Jewish moneylender.’ (Now Drax was talking faster. The words poured excitedly from his lips. Bond watched a fleck of foam gather at one corner of his mouth and grow.) ‘Ha. It was easy. Crack on his bald skull. £15,000 in the safe. And then away and out of the country, Tangier – where you could do anything, buy anything, fix anything. Columbite. Rarer than platinum and everyone would want it. The Jet Age. I knew about these things. I had not forgotten my own profession. And then by God I worked. For five years I lived for money. And I was brave as a lion. I took terrible risks. And suddenly the first million was there. Then the second. Then the fifth. Then the twentieth. I came back to England. I spent a million of it and London was in my pocket. And then I went back to Germany. I found Krebs. I found fifty of them. Loyal Germans. Brilliant technicians. All living under false names like so many others of my old comrades. I gave them their orders and they waited, peacefully, innocently. And where was I?’ Drax stared across at Bond, his eyes wide. ‘I was in Moscow. Moscow! A man with Columbite to sell can go anywhere. I got to the right people. They listened to my plans. They gave me Walter, the new genius of their guided missile station at Peenemunde, and the good Russians started to build the atomic warhead,’ he gestured up to the ceiling, ‘that is now waiting up there. Then I came back to London.’ A pause. ‘The Coronation. My letter to the Palace. Triumph. Hooray for Drax,’ he burst into a roar of laughter. ‘England at my feet. Every bloody fool in the country! And then my men come over and we start. Under the very skirts of Britannia. On top of her famous cliffs. We work like devils. We built a jetty into your English Channel. For supplies! For supplies from my good friends the Russians that came in dead on time last Monday night. But then Tallon has to hear something. The old fool. He talks to the Ministry. But Krebs is listening. There were fifty volunteers to kill the man. Lots are drawn and Bartsch dies a hero’s death.’ Drax paused. ‘He will not be forgotten.’ Then he went on. ‘The new warhead is hoisted into place. It fits. A perfect piece of design. The same weight. Everything perfect, and the old one, the tin can full of the Ministry’s cherished instruments, is now in Stettin – behind the Iron Curtain. And the faithful submarine is on her way back here and will soon,’ he looked at his watch, ‘be creeping under the waters of the English Channel to take us all off at one minute past midday tomorrow.’

Drax wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and lay back in his chair gazing up at the ceiling, his eyes full of visions. Suddenly he chuckled and squinted quizzically down his nose at Bond.

‘And do you know what we shall do first when we go on board? We shall shave off those famous moustaches you were so interested in. You smelt a mouse, my dear Bond, where you ought to have smelt a rat. Those shaven heads and those moustaches we all cultivated so assiduously. Just a precaution, my dear fellow. Try shaving your own head and growing a big black moustache. Even your mother wouldn’t recognize you. It’s the combination that counts. Just a tiny refinement. Precision, my dear fellow. Precision in every detail. That has been my watchword.’ He chuckled fatly and puffed away at his cigar.

Suddenly he looked sharply, suspiciously up at Bond. ‘Well. Say something. Don’t sit there like a dummy. What do you think of my story? Don’t you think it’s extraordinary, remarkable? For one man to have done all that? Come on, come on.’ A hand came up to his mouth and he started tearing furiously at his nails. Then it was plunged back into his pocket and his eyes became cruel and cold. ‘Or do you want me to have to send for Krebs,’ he made a gesture towards the house telephone on his desk. ‘The Persuader. Poor Krebs. He’s like a child who’s had his toys taken away from him. Or perhaps Walter. He would give you both something to remember. There’s no softness in that one. Well?’

‘Yes,’ said Bond. He looked levelly at the great red face across the desk. ‘It’s a remarkable case-history. Galloping paranoia. Delusions of jealousy and persecution. Megalomaniac hatred and desire for revenge. Curiously enough,’ he went on conversationally, ‘it may have something to do with your teeth. Diastema, they call it. Comes from sucking your thumb when you’re a child. Yes. I expect that’s what the psychologists will say when they get you into the lunatic asylum. “Ogre’s teeth.” Being bullied at school and so on. Extraordinary the effect it has on a child. Then Nazism helped to fan the flames and then came the crack on your ugly head. The crack you engineered yourself. I expect that settled it. From then on you were really mad. Same sort of thing as people who think they’re God. Extraordinary what tenacity they have. Absolute fanatics. You’re almost a genius. Lombroso would have been delighted with you. As it is you’re just a mad dog that’ll have to be shot. Or else you’ll commit suicide. Paranoiacs generally do. Too bad. Sad business.’

Bond paused and put all the scorn he could summon into his voice. ‘And now let’s get on with this farce, you great hairy-faced lunatic.’

It worked. With every word Drax’s face had become more contorted with rage, his eyes were red with it, the sweat of fury was dripping off his jowls on to his shirt, the lips were drawn back from the gaping teeth and a string of saliva had crept out of his mouth and was hanging down from his chin. Now, at the last private-school insult that must have awoken God knows what stinging memories, he leapt up from his chair and lunged round the desk at Bond, his hairy fists flailing.

Bond gritted his teeth and took it.

When Drax had twice had to pick the chair up with Bond in it, the tornado of rage suddenly passed. He took out his silk handkerchief and wiped his face and hands. Then he walked quietly to the door and spoke across the lolling head of Bond to the girl.

‘I don’t think you two will give me any more trouble,’ he said, and his voice was quite calm and certain. ‘Krebs never makes a mistake with his knots.’ He gesticulated towards the bloody figure in the other chair. ‘When he wakes up,’ he said, ‘you can tell him that these doors will open once more, just before noon tomorrow. A few minutes later there will be nothing left of either of you. Not even,’ he added as he wrenched open the inner door, ‘the stoppings in your teeth.’

The outer door slammed.

Bond slowly raised his head and grinned painfully at the girl with his bloodstained lips.

‘Had to get him mad,’ he said with difficulty. ‘Didn’t want to give him time to think. Had to work up a brainstorm.’

Gala looked at him uncomprehendingly, her eyes wide at the terrible mask of his face.

‘’S’all right,’ said Bond thickly. ‘Don’t worry. London’s okay. Got a plan.’

Over on the desk the blowtorch gave a quiet ‘plop’ and went out.

23 | ZERO MINUS

Through half-closed eyes Bond looked intently at the torch while for a few precious seconds he sat and let life creep back into his body. His head felt as if it had been used as a football, but there was nothing broken. Drax had hit him unscientifically and with the welter of blows of a drunken man.

Gala watched him anxiously. The eyes in the bloody face were almost shut, but the line of the jaw was taut with concentration and she could feel the effort of will he was making.

He gave his head a shake and when he turned towards her she could see that his eyes were feverish with triumph.

He nodded towards the desk. ‘The lighter,’ he said urgently. ‘I had to try and make him forget it. Follow me. I’ll show you.’ He started to rock the light steel chair inch by inch towards the desk. ‘For God’s sake don’t tip over or we’ve had it. But make it fast or the blowlamp’ll get cold.’

Uncomprehendingly, and feeling almost as if they were playing some ghastly children’s game, Gala carefully rocked her way across the floor in his wake.

Seconds later Bond told her to stop beside the desk while he went rocking on round to Drax’s chair. Then he manoeuvred himself into position opposite his target and with a sudden lurch heaved himself and the chair forward so that his head came down.

There was a painful crack as the Ronson desk lighter connected with his teeth, but his lips held it and the top of it was in his mouth as he heaved the chair back with just enough force to prevent it spilling over. Then he started his patient journey back to where Gala was sitting at the corner of the desk on which Krebs had left the blowlamp.

He rested until his breath was steady again. ‘Now we come to the difficult part,’ he said grimly. ‘While I try to get this torch going, you get your chair round so that your right arm is as close in front of me as possible.’

Obediently she edged herself round while Bond swayed his chair so that it leant against the edge of the desk and allowed his mouth to reach forward and grip the handle of the blowtorch between his teeth.

Then he eased the torch towards him and after minutes of patient work he had the torch and the lighter arranged to his liking at the edge of the desk.

After another rest he bent down, closed the valve of the torch with his teeth, and proceeded to get pressure back by slowly and repeatedly pulling up the plunger with his lips and pressing it back with his chin. His face could feel the warmth in the pre-heater and he could smell the remnants of gas in it. If only it hadn’t cooled off too much.

He straightened up.

‘Last lap, Gala,’ he said, smiling crookedly at her. ‘I may have to hurt you a bit. All right?’

‘Of course,’ said Gala.

‘Then here goes,’ said Bond, and he bent forward and released the safety valve on the left of the canister.

Then he quickly bent forward over the Ronson, which was standing at right angles and just below the neck of the torch, and with his two front teeth pressed down sharply on the ignition lever.

It was a horrible manoeuvre and though he whipped back his head with the speed of a snake he let out a gasp of pain as the jet of blue fire from the torch seared across his bruised cheek and the bridge of his nose.

But the vaporized paraffin was hissing out its vital tongue of flame and he shook the water out of his streaming eyes and bent his head almost at right angles and again got his teeth to the handle of the blowtorch.

He thought his jaw would break with the weight of the thing and the nerves of his front teeth screamed at him, but he swayed his chair carefully upright away from the desk and then strained his bent neck forward until the tip of blue fire from the torch was biting into the flex that bound Gala’s right wrist to the arm of her chair.

He tried desperately to keep the flame steady but the breath rasped through the girl’s teeth as the handle shifted between his jaws and the flame of the torch brushed her forearm.

But then it was over. Melted by the fierce heat, the copper strands parted one by one and suddenly Gala’s right arm was free and she was reaching to take the torch out of Bond’s mouth.

Bond’s head fell back on to his shoulders and he twisted his neck luxuriously to get the blood moving in the aching muscles.

Almost before he knew it, Gala was bending over his arms and legs and he too was free.

As he sat still for a moment, his eyes closed, waiting for the life to come back into his body, he suddenly, delightedly felt Gala’s soft lips on his mouth.