Bond 03 - Moonraker (12 page)

M. turned back and faced him again across the desk.

‘The people who are most worried about all this,’ he said, ‘are the Ministry of Supply. Tallon was one of their best men. His reports had been completely negative all along. Then he suddenly rang up the Assistant Under-Secretary yesterday afternoon and said he thought something fishy was going on at the site and he asked to see the Minister personally at ten o’clock this morning. Wouldn’t say anything more on the telephone. And a few hours later he gets shot. Another funny coincidence, wasn’t it?’

‘Very funny,’ said Bond. ‘But why don’t they close down the site and have a wholesale inquiry? After all, this thing’s too big to take a chance on.’

‘The Cabinet met early this morning,’ said M., ‘and the Prime Minister asked the obvious question. What evidence was there of any attempt, or even of any intention, to sabotage the Moonraker? The answer was none. There were only fears which had been brought to the surface in the last twenty-four hours by Tallon’s vague message and the double murder. Everyone agreed that unless there was a grain of evidence, which so far hasn’t turned up, both these incidents could be put down to the terrific nervous tension on the site. The way things are in the world at the moment it was decided that the sooner the Moonraker could give us an independent say in world affairs the better for us and,’ M. shrugged his shoulders, ‘quite possibly for the world. And it was agreed that for a thousand reasons why the Moonraker should be fired the reasons against didn’t stand up. The Minister of Supply had to agree, but he knows as well as you or I that, whatever the facts, it would be a colossal victory for the Russians to sabotage the Moonraker on the eve of her practice shoot. If they did it well enough they might easily get the whole project shelved. There are fifty Germans working on the thing. Any one of them could have relatives still being held in Russia whose lives could be used as a lever.’ M. paused. He looked up at the ceiling. Then his eyes came down and rested thoughtfully on Bond.

‘The Minister asked me to go and see him after the Cabinet. He said that the least he could do was replace Tallon at once. The new man must be bilingual in German, a sabotage expert, and have had plenty of experience of our Russian friends. M.I.5 have put up three candidates. They’re all on cases at the moment, but they could be extricated in a few hours. But then the Minister asked my opinion. I gave it. He talked to the Prime Minister and a lot of red tape got cut very quickly.’

Bond looked sharply, resentfully, into the grey, uncompromising eyes.

‘So,’ said M. flatly, ‘Sir Hugo Drax has been notified of your appointment and he expects you down at his headquarters in time for dinner this evening.’

A
T SIX
o’clock that Tuesday evening towards the end of May, James Bond was thrashing the big Bentley down the Dover road along the straight stretch that runs into Maidstone.

Although he was driving fast and with concentration, part of his mind was going back over his movements since he had left M.’s office four and a half hours earlier.

After giving a brief outline of the case to his secretary and eating a quick lunch at a table to himself in the canteen, he had told the garage for God’s sake to hurry up with his car and deliver it, filled up, to his flat not later than four o’clock. Then he had taken a taxi down to Scotland Yard where he had an appointment with Assistant Commissioner Vallance at a quarter to three.

The courtyards and cul-de-sacs of the Yard had reminded him as usual of a prison without roofs. The overhead strip lighting in the cold corridor took the colour out of the cheeks of the police sergeant who asked his business and watched him sign the apple-green chit. It did the same for the face of the constable who led him up the short steps and along the bleak passage between the rows of anonymous doors to the waiting-room.

A quiet, middle-aged woman with the resigned eyes of someone who had seen everything came in and said the Assistant Commissioner would be free in five minutes. Bond had gone to the window and had looked out into the grey courtyard below. A constable, looking naked without his helmet, had come out of a building and walked across the yard munching a split roll with something pink between the two halves. It had been very quiet and the noise of the traffic on Whitehall and on the Embankment had sounded far away. Bond had felt dispirited. He was getting tangled up with strange departments. He would be out of touch with his own people and his own Service routines. Already, in this waiting-room, he felt out of his element. Only criminals or informers came and waited here, or influential people vainly trying to get out of a dangerous driving charge or desperately hoping to persuade Vallance that their sons were not really homosexuals. You could not be in the waiting-room of the Special Branch for any innocent purpose. You were either prosecuting or defending.

At last the woman came for him. He stubbed out his cigarette in the top of the Player’s cigarette tin that serves as an ashtray in the waiting-rooms of government departments, and followed her across the corridor.

After the gloom of the waiting-room the unseasonable fire in the hearth of the large cheerful room had seemed like a trick, like the cigarette offered you by the Gestapo.

It had taken Bond a full five minutes to shake off his depression and realize that Ronnie Vallance was relieved to see him, that he was not interested in inter-departmental jealousies and that he was only looking to Bond to protect the Moonraker and get one of his best officers out of what might be a bad mess.

Vallance was a man of great tact. For the first few minutes he had spoken only of M. And he had spoken with inside knowledge and with sincerity. Without even mentioning the case he had gained Bond’s friendship and co-operation.

As Bond swung the Bentley through the crowded streets of Maidstone he reflected that Vallance’s gift had come from twenty years of avoiding the corns of M.I.5, of working in with the uniformed branch of the police, and of handling ignorant politicians and affronted foreign diplomats.

When Bond had left him after a quarter of an hour’s hard talking, each man knew that he had acquired an ally. Vallance had sized up Bond and knew that Gala Brand would get all Bond’s help and whatever protection she needed. He also respected Bond’s professional approach to the assignment and his absence of departmental rivalry with the Special Branch. As for Bond, he was full of admiration for what he had learned about Vallance’s agent, and he felt that he was no longer naked and that he had Vallance and the whole of Vallance’s department behind him.

Bond had left Scotland Yard with the feeling that he had achieved Clausewitz’s first principle. He had made his base secure.

His visit to the Ministry of Supply had added nothing to his knowledge of the case. He had studied Tallon’s record and his reports. The former was quite straightforward – a lifetime in Army Intelligence and Field Security – and the latter painted a picture of a very lively and well-managed technical establishment – one or two cases of drunkenness, one of petty theft, several personal vendettas leading to fights and mild bloodshed but otherwise a loyal and hardworking team of men.

Then he had had an inadequate half-hour in the Operations Room of the Ministry with Professor Train, a fat, scruffy, undistinguished-looking man who had been runner-up for the Physics Division of the Nobel Prize the year before and who was one of the greatest experts on guided missiles in the world.

Professor Train had walked up to a row of huge wall maps and had pulled down the cord of one of them. Bond was faced with a ten-foot horizontal scale diagram of something that looked like a V2 with big fins.

‘Now,’ said Professor Train, ‘you know nothing about rockets so I’m going to put this in simple terms and not fill you up with a lot of stuff about Nozzle Expansion Ratios, Exhaust Velocity, and the Keplerian Ellipse. The Moonraker, as Drax chooses to call it, is a single-stage rocket. It uses up all its fuel shooting itself into the air and then it homes on to the objective. The V2’s trajectory was more like a shell fired from a gun. At the top of its 200-mile flight it had climbed to about 70 miles. It was fuelled with a very combustible mixture of alcohol and liquid oxygen which was watered down so as not to burn out the mild steel which was all they were allocated for the engine. There are far more powerful fuels available but until now we hadn’t been able to achieve very much with them for the same reason, their combustion temperature is so high that they would burn out the toughest engine.’

The Professor paused and stuck a finger in Bond’s chest. ‘All you, my dear sir, have to remember about this rocket is that, thanks to Drax’s Columbite which has a melting point of about 3,500 degrees Centigrade, compared with 1,300 in the V2 engines, we can use one of the super fuels without burning out the engine. In fact,’ he looked at Bond as if Bond should be impressed, ‘we are using fluorine and hydrogen.’

‘Oh, really,’ said Bond reverently.

The Professor looked at him sharply. ‘So we hope to achieve a speed in the neighbourhood of 15,000 miles an hour and a vertical range of about 1,000 miles. This should produce an operational range of about 4,000 miles, bringing every European capital within reach of England. Very useful,’ he added drily, ‘in certain circumstances. But, for the scientists, chiefly desirable as a step towards escape from the earth. Any questions?’

‘How does it work?’ asked Bond dutifully.

The Professor gestured brusquely towards the diagram. ‘Let’s start from the nose,’ he said. ‘First comes the warhead. For the practice shoot this will contain upper-atmosphere instruments, radar and suchlike. Then the gyro compasses to make it fly straight – pitch-and-yaw gyro and roll gyro. Then various minor instruments, servo motors, power supply. And then the big fuel tanks – 30,000 pounds of the stuff.

‘At the stern you get two small tanks to drive the turbine. Four hundred pounds of hydrogen peroxide mixes with forty pounds of potassium permanganate and makes steam which drives the turbines underneath them. These drive a set of centrifugal pumps which force the main fuel into the rocket motor. Under terrific pressure. Do you follow me?’ He cocked a dubious eyebrow at Bond.

‘Sounds much the same principle as a jet plane,’ said Bond.

The Professor seemed pleased. ‘More or less,’ he said. ‘But the rocket carries all its fuel inside it, instead of sucking in oxygen from outside like the Comet. Well then,’ he continued, ‘the fuel gets ignited in the motor and squirts out at the end in a continuous blast. Rather like a continuous recoil from a gun. And this blast forces the rocket into the air like any other firework. Of course it’s at the stern that the Columbite comes in. It’s allowed us to make a motor that won’t be melted by the fantastic heat. And then,’ he pointed, ‘those are the tail fins to keep it steady at the beginning of its flight. Also made of Columbite alloy or they’d break away with the colossal air pressure. Anything else?’

‘How can you be certain it’ll come down where you mean it to?’ asked Bond. ‘What’s to prevent it falling on The Hague next Friday?’

‘The gyros will see to that. But as a matter of fact we’re taking no chances on Friday and we’re using a radar homing device on a raft in the middle of the sea. There’ll be a radar transmitter in the nose of the rocket which will pick up an echo from our gadget in the sea and home on to it automatically. Of course,’ the Professor grinned, ‘if we ever had to use the thing in wartime it would be a great help to have a homing device transmitting energy from the middle of Moscow or Warsaw or Prague or Monte Carlo or wherever we might be shooting at. It’ll probably be up to you chaps to get one there. Good luck to you.’

Bond smiled non-committally. ‘One more question,’ he said. ‘If you wanted to sabotage the rocket what would be the easiest way?’

‘Any number,’ said the Professor cheerfully. ‘Sand in the fuel. Grit in the pumps. A small hole anywhere on the fuselage or the fins. With that power and at those speeds the smallest fault would finish it.’

‘Thanks very much,’ said Bond. ‘It seems you’ve got fewer worries about the Moonraker than I have.’

‘It’s a wonderful machine,’ said the Professor. ‘She’ll fly all right if nobody interferes with her. Drax has done a sound job. Wonderful organizer. That’s a brilliant team he put together. And they’ll do anything for him. We’ve got a lot to thank him for.’

Bond did a racing change and swung the big car left at the Charing fork, preferring the clear road by Chilham and Canterbury to the bottlenecks of Ashford and Folkestone. The car howled up to eighty in third and he held it in the same gear to negotiate the hairpin at the top of the long gradient leading up to the Molash road.

And, he wondered, going back into top and listening with satisfaction to the relaxed thunder of the exhaust, and what about Drax? What sort of a reception was Drax going to give him this evening? According to M., when his name had been suggested over the telephone, Drax had paused for a moment and then said, ‘Oh yes. I know the fellow. Didn’t know he was mixed up in that racket. I’d be interested to have another look at him. Send him along. I’ll expect him in time for dinner.’ Then he had rung off.

The people at the Ministry had their own view of Drax. In their dealings with him they had found him a dedicated man, completely bound up in the Moonraker, living for nothing but its success, driving his men to the limit, fighting for priorities in material with other departments, goading the Ministry of Supply into clearing his requirements at Cabinet level. They disliked his hectoring manners but they respected him for his know-how and his drive and his dedication. And, like the rest of England, they considered him a possible saviour of the country.

Well, thought Bond, accelerating down the straight stretch of road past Chilham Castle, he could see that picture too and if he was going to work with the man he must adjust himself to the heroic version. If Drax was willing, he would put the whole affair at Blades out of his mind and concentrate on protecting Drax and his wonderful project from their country’s enemies. There were only about three days to go. The security precautions were already minute and Drax might resent suggestions for increasing them. It was not going to be easy and a great deal of tact would have to be used. Tact. Not Bond’s long suit and not, he reflected, connected in any way with what he knew of Drax’s character.