Bond 07 - Goldfinger (23 page)

Suddenly the silence and immobility of the peaceful scene were broken. It was as if Bond had put a penny in the slot of a diorama on Brighton pier. Somewhere a tinny clock struck five. At the signal, the back door of the house opened and Goldfinger came out, still dressed in his white linen motoring coat, but without the helmet. He was followed by a nondescript, obsequious little man with a toothbrush moustache and horn-rimmed spectacles. Goldfinger looked pleased. He went up to the Rolls and patted its bonnet. The other man laughed politely. He took a whistle out of his waistcoat pocket and blew it. A door in the right-hand workshop opened and four workmen in blue overalls filed out and walked over to the car. From the open door they had left there came a whirring noise and a heavy engine started up and settled into the rhythmic pant Bond remembered from Reculver.

The four men disposed themselves round the car. At a word from the little man, who was presumably the foreman, they began to take the car to pieces.

By the time they had lifted the four doors off their hinges, removed the bonnet cover from the engine and had set about the rivets on one of the mudguards, it was clear that they were methodically stripping the car of its armour plating.

Almost as soon as Bond had come to this conclusion, the black, bowler-hatted figure of Oddjob appeared at the back door of the house and made some sort of a noise at Goldfinger. With a word to the foreman, Goldfinger went indoors and left the workmen to it.

It was time for Bond to get going. He took a last careful look round to fix the geography in his mind and edged back among the trees.

‘I am from Universal Export.’.

‘Oh yes?’ Behind the desk there was a reproduction of the Annigoni portrait of the Queen. On the other walls were advertisements for Ferguson tractors and other agricultural machinery. From outside the wide window came the hum of traffic along the Quai Wilson. A steamer hooted. Bond glanced out of the window and watched it ride across the middle distance. It left an enchanted wake across the flawless evening mirror of the lake. Bond looked back into the politely inquiring eyes in the bland, neutral, businessman’s face.

‘We were hoping to do business with you.’

‘What sort of business?’

‘Important business.’

The man’s face broke into a smile. He said cheerfully, ‘It’s 007, isn’t it? Thought I recognized you. Well now, what can I do for you?’ The voice became cautious. ‘Only one thing, better make it quick and get along. There’s been the hell of a heat on since the Dumont business. They’ve got me taped – the locals and Redland. All very peaceful of course, but you won’t want them sniffing round you.’

‘I thought it might be like that. It’s only routine. Here.’ Bond unbuttoned his shirt and took out the heavy chunk of gold. ‘Get that back, would you? And transmit this when you have a chance.’ The man pulled a pad towards him and wrote in shorthand to Bond’s dictation.

When the man had finished he put the pad in his pocket. ‘Well, well! Pretty hot stuff. Wilco. My routine’s at midnight. This’ – he indicated the gold – ‘can go to Berne for the bag. Anything else?’

‘Ever heard of the “Entreprises Auric” at Coppet? Know what they do?’

‘I know what every engineering business in the area does. Have to. Tried to sell them some hand riveters last year. They make metal furniture. Pretty good stuff. The Swiss railways take some of it, and the airlines.’

‘Know which airlines?’

The man shrugged. ‘I heard they did all the work for Mecca, the big charter line to India. Their terminus is Geneva. They’re quite a big competitor with All-India. Mecca’s privately owned. Matter of fact, I did hear that Auric & Co. had some money in it. No wonder they’ve got the contract for the seating.’

A slow, grim smile spread across Bond’s face. He got up and held out his hand. ‘You don’t know it, but you’ve just done a whole jigsaw puzzle in under a minute. Many thanks. Best of luck with the tractor business. Hope we’ll meet again one day.’

Out in the street, Bond got quickly into his car and drove along the
quai
to the Bergues. So that was the picture! For two days he’d been trailing a Silver Ghost across Europe. It was an armour-plated Silver Ghost. He’d watched the last bit of plating being riveted on in Kent, and the whole lot being stripped off at Coppet. Those sheets would already be in the furnaces at Coppet, ready to be modelled into seventy chairs for a Mecca Constellation. In a few days’ time those chairs would be stripped off the plane in India and replaced with aluminium ones. And Goldfinger would have made what? Half a million pounds? A million?

For the Silver Ghost wasn’t silver at all. It was a Golden Ghost – all the two tons of its bodywork. Solid, eighteen-carat, white gold.

J
AMES
B
OND
booked in at the Hôtel des Bergues, took a bath and shower and changed his clothes. He weighed the Walther PPK in his hand and wondered whether he should take it or leave it behind. He decided to leave it. He had no intention of being seen when he went back to the Entreprises Auric. If, by dreadful luck, he was seen, it would spoil everything to get into a fight. He had his story, a poor one, but at least one that would not break his cover. He would have to rely on that. But Bond did choose a particular pair of shoes that were rather heavier than one could expect from their casual build.

At the desk he asked if Miss Soames was in. He was not surprised when the receptionist said they had no Miss Soames staying in the hotel. The only question was whether she had left the hotel when Bond was out of sight or had registered under another name.

Bond motored across the beautiful Pont du Mont Blanc and along the brightly lit
quai
to the Bavaria, a modest Alsatian brasserie that had been the rendezvous of the great in the days of the League of Nations. He sat by the window and drank Enzian washed down with pale Löwenbrau. He thought first about Goldfinger. There was now no doubt what he was up to. He financed a spy network, probably smersh, and he made fortunes smuggling gold to India, the country where he could get the biggest premium. After the loss of his Brixham trawler, he had thought out this new way. He first made it known that he had an armoured car. That would only be considered eccentric. Many English bodybuilders exported them. They used to go to Indian rajahs; now they went to oil sheiks and South American presidents. Goldfinger had chosen a Silver Ghost because, with his modifications, the chassis was strong enough, the riveting was already a feature of the bodywork, and there was the largest possible area of metal sheeting. Perhaps Goldfinger had run it abroad once or twice to get Ferryfield used to it. Then, on the next trip, he took off the armour plating in his works at Reculver. He substituted eighteen-carat white gold. Its alloy of nickel and silver would be strong enough. The colour of the metal would not betray him if he got in a smash or if the bodywork were scratched. Then off to Switzerland and to the little factory. The workmen would have been as carefully picked as the ones at Reculver. They would take off the plates and mould them into aircraft seats which would then be upholstered and installed in Mecca Airlines – run presumably by some stooge of Goldfinger’s who got a cut on each ‘gold run’. On these runs – once, twice, three times a year? – the plane would accept only light freight and a few passengers. At Bombay or Calcutta the plane would need an overhaul, be reequipped. It would go to the Mecca hangar and have new seats fitted. The old ones, the gold ones, would go to the bullion brokers. Goldfinger would get his sterling credit in Nassau or wherever he chose. He would have made his hundred, or two hundred, percent profit and could start the cycle all over again, from the ‘We Buy Old Gold’ shops in Britain to Reculver–Geneva–Bombay.

Yes, thought Bond, gazing out across the glistening, starlit lake, that’s how it would be – a top-notch smuggling circuit with a minimum risk and maximum profit. How Goldfinger must smile as he pressed the bulb of the old boa-constrictor horn and swept past the admiring policemen of three countries! He certainly seemed to have the answer – the philosopher’s stone, the finger of gold! If he hadn’t been such an unpleasant man, if he wasn’t doing all this to sustain the trigger finger of smersh, Bond would have felt admiration for this monumental trickster whose operations were so big that they worried even the Bank of England. As it was, Bond only wanted to destroy Goldfinger, seize his gold, get him behind bars. Goldfinger’s gold-lust was too strong, too ruthless, too dangerous to be allowed the run of the world.

It was eight o’clock. The Enzian, the firewater distilled from gentian that is responsible for Switzerland’s chronic alcoholism, was beginning to warm Bond’s stomach and melt his tensions. He ordered another double and with it a choucroute and a carafe of Fondant.

And what about the girl, this pretty, authoritarian joker that had suddenly been faced in the deal? What in hell was she about? What about this golf story? Bond got up and went to the telephone booth at the back of the room. He got on to the
Journal de Genève
and through to the sports editor. The man was helpful, but surprised at Bond’s question. No. The various championships were of course played in the summer when the other national programmes were finished and it was possible to lure a good foreign entry to Switzerland. It was the same with all other European countries. They liked to bring in as many British and American players as possible. It increased the gates. ‘Pas de quoi, monsieur.’

Bond went back to his table and ate his dinner. So much for that. Whoever she was, she was an amateur. No professional would use a cover that could be broken down by one telephone call. It had been in the back of Bond’s mind – reluctantly, because he liked the girl and was excited by her – that she could, she just could have been an agent of
SMERSH
sent to keep an eye on Goldfinger, or Bond or both. She had some of the qualities of a secret agent, the independence, the strength of character, the ability to walk alone. But that idea was out. She hadn’t got the training.

Bond ordered a slice of gruyère, pumpernickel and coffee. No, she was an enigma. Bond only prayed that she hadn’t got some private plot involving either him or Goldfinger that was going to mess up his own operation.

And his own job was so nearly finished! All he needed was the evidence of his own eyes that the story he had woven round Goldfinger and the Rolls was the truth. One look into the works at Coppet – one grain of white gold dust – and he could be off to Berne that very night and be on to the duty officer over the Embassy scrambler. Then, quietly, discreetly, the Bank of England would freeze Goldfinger’s accounts all over the world and perhaps, already tomorrow, the Special Branch of the Swiss police would be knocking on the door of Entreprises Auric. Extradition would follow, Goldfinger would go to Brixton, there would be a quiet, rather complicated case in one of the smuggling courts like Maidstone or Lewes. Goldfinger would get a few years, his naturalization would be revoked and his gold hoard, illegally exported, would trickle back into the vaults below the Bank of England. And
SMERSH
would gnash its blood-stained teeth and add another page to Bond’s bulging zapiska.

Time to go for the last lap. Bond paid his bill and went out and got into his car. He crossed the Rhône and motored slowly along the glittering
quai
through the evening traffic. It was an average night for his purpose. There was a blazing three-quarter moon to see by, but not a breath of wind to hide his approach through the woods to the factory. Well, there was no hurry. They would probably be working through the night. He would have to take it very easily and carefully. The geography of the place and the route he had plotted for himself ran before Bond’s eyes like a film while the automatic pilot that is in all good drivers took the car along the wide white highway beside the sleeping lake.

Bond followed his route of the afternoon. When he had turned off the main road he drove on his sidelights. He nosed the car off the lane into a clearing in the woods and switched off the engine. He sat and listened. In the heavy silence there was only a soft ticking from the hot metal under the bonnet and the hasty trip of the dashboard clock. Bond got out, eased the door shut and walked softly down the little path through the trees.

Now he could hear the soft heavy pant of the generator engine ... thumpah ... thumpah ... thumpah. It seemed a watchful, rather threatening noise. Bond reached the gap in the iron bars, slipped through and stood, straining his senses forward through the moon-dappled trees.

THUMPAH ... THUMPAH ... THUMPAH. The great iron puffs were on top of him, inside his brain. Bond felt the skin-crawling tickle at the groin that dates from one’s first game of hide and seek in the dark. He smiled to himself at the animal danger signal. What primeval chord had been struck by this innocent engine noise coming out of the tall zinc chimney? The breath of a dinosaur in its cave? Bond tightened his muscles and crept forward foot by foot, moving small branches carefully out of his way, placing each step as cautiously as if he was going through a minefield.

The trees were thinning. Soon he would be up with the big sheltering trunk he had used before. He looked for it and then stood frozen, his pulse racing. Below the trunk of his tree, spreadeagled on the ground, was a body.

Bond opened his mouth wide and breathed slowly in and out to release the tension. Softly he wiped his sweating palms down his trousers. He dropped slowly to his hands and knees and stared forward, his eyes widened like camera lenses.

The body under the tree moved, shifted cautiously to a new position. A breath of wind whispered in the tops of the trees. The moonbeams danced quickly across the body and then were still. There was a glimpse of thick black hair, black sweater, narrow black slacks. And something else – a straight gleam of metal along the ground. It began beneath the clump of black hair and ran past the trunk of the trees into the grass.

Bond slowly, wearily bent his head and looked at the ground between his spread hands. It was the girl, Tilly. She was watching the buildings below. She had a rifle – a rifle that must have been among the innocent golf clubs – ready to fire on them. Damn and blast the silly bitch!