James Bond and Moonraker (5 page)

‘They’re the astronaut trainees. They’re part of a project very close to Mr Drax’s heart. The Drax Corporation Astronaut Training Scheme.’

‘I thought all that was handled by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration?’ said Bond.

‘It used to be, but Mr Drax offered a scholarship if it could be open to people from all over the world.’ She shrugged. ‘You know, like space belongs to everybody. It was an offer NASA could hardly refuse. They provide a lot of the teaching staff, the Drax Corporation has paid for the installation.’

Bond looked back admiringly. ‘They’re more like the finalists in a Mr and Miss Universe contest.’

Trudi smiled. ‘Mr Drax went out of his way to select the finest physical specimens.’

Bond looked at Trudi appreciatively. ‘I gathered that back at the airport.’

Trudi’s fingers tightened on the handle of the control column.

‘You’re trying to turn a young girl’s head, Mr Bond.’ She moved her arm and the helicopter dipped earthwards.

When the rotor blades had almost stopped turning and the banshee wail of the engine died away to the shudder of a sewing machine shuttle, the canopy was drawn back and Bond unclipped his belt and climbed down to the small take-off pad on which they had landed. ‘Thanks for the ride,’ he said.

Trudi’s smile challenged sunlight. ‘Any time,’ she said. She gestured towards a flight of stone steps and Bond climbed out, feeling the warm desert air on his face. So incongruous were his surroundings that he found it difficult to know exactly where he was. It was as if he had suddenly arrived inside a dream that had taken on the trappings of reality. A man in the black jacket and striped grey trousers of an English manservant hurried forward as they came to the top of the steps.

‘Mr Bond’s bags will be arriving in a few minutes, Gilbert,’ said Trudi. ‘I’ll show him his room.’

‘Yes, miss.’ The man was English. He spoke with a faint trace of a cockney accent. He lowered his head to Bond by way of respectful greeting and remained at the top of the steps with his hands clasped across the front of his body, scanning the sky like a hunter’s dog waiting for the first duck.

Trudi led the way across the terrace past poker-shaped shrubs in wrought iron tubs and through french windows that reached up three times Bond’s height and still fell twelve feet short of the sculpted ceiling of the interior. The drawing room stretched away like a picture gallery and was a furniture repository of antiques gleaming under a turtle-shell thickness of polish. Bond glanced about him as he crossed the Persian rugs and tried to equate his surroundings with his recollections of Randolph Hearst’s castle at San Simeon. He had never seen it in its heyday, but first impressions suggested that Hugo Drax had made progress in the realm of twenty-four carat gold eccentricity. Two great doors allowed access to a marble hallway with more busts in niches and alcoves and a wide staircase dividing into two beneath a large oil painting which must have been either a Rembrandt or a masterly imitation. Bond felt ill-equipped to judge but his inclination was towards the former. There may have been something slightly vulgar about the display of so much wealth, but it was a very genuine vulgarity.

Trudi moved gracefully up the stairs and turned right at the painting.

‘We’re along here,’ she said. Bond permitted himself a raised eyebrow. ‘I mean of course that both our bedrooms happen to be in this wing. There’s no shortage of them.’

‘What a shame.’ Bond looked at the suits of armour that lined the walls at intervals of ten paces. They were mostly French, with the face-pieces protruding forward in cruel spikes. The corridor was wide and the roof criss-crossed with painted timbers. The ceiling plaster between was an intricate tapestry of beautifully painted flowers. Even the leaded panes of the windows appeared genuine, an occasional yellow or blue diamond appearing amongst the thin ice-like slivers of antique glass.

Trudi stopped by a door and threw it open. ‘This is your apartment. I’m next door.’

‘Very handy,’ said Bond. ‘I’ll remember that if I need a glass of water.’

‘I’ll make sure my toothmug is clean.’ Trudi glanced at her watch and became businesslike again. ‘I’ll let Mr Drax know you’ve arrived. Your bags should be up right away. Will you be through cleaning up in half an hour?’

‘I can be.’

‘Good. Cavendish, Mr Drax’s butler, will come and collect you. I’ll see you later.’

‘I hope so,’ said Bond. He looked after Trudi as she walked away down the corridor and then entered the room. It was dominated by a large four-poster bed with a silk canopy bearing a fleur-de-lis motif. Bond wondered how many kings and queens of France — and their lovers — had slept in it before he was accorded the privilege. The ceiling was high and painted with a scene representing heavenly activity that involved cupids with trumpets, old men with long beards and plump, pink ladies who were having difficulty in disguising their private parts behind the insubstantial swirls of diaphanous material that they chose to wear in preference to clothing.

There was a discreet tap on the door, and Gilbert entered to place Bond’s battered Vuiton suitcases on a carved oak settle which stood at the end of the bed. Bond thanked him and walked into the bathroom, which might have been moved in its entirety from a Paris hotel
de grande classe
. Tiles from floor to ceiling, a deep bath with taps like golden trumpets and a Heath Robinson shower attachment constructed like an antique flame thrower; black and white tiles on the floor and more mirrors than in a whore’s bedroom; a bidet with a light blue pictorial design that was practically willow-pattern. A comfortable, white towelling ankle-length robe hung sensibly next to the bath.

Bond stripped off, took a long cold shower and selected fresh underwear and a clean Sea Island shirt from one of his bags. Not only did he feel the desire to eradicate all traces of the journey from England but he wanted also to perform a spiritual absolution. To feel again like a well-primed machine when he advanced to come under Drax’s scrutiny. He knotted his tie, knowing that one part of his preparation was lacking. He wanted a drink. A glance round the room led him to a small Louis Quinze cabinet standing on four squat bulldog legs. He pulled at one of the drawers and found what he was looking for. The whole façade of the piece had been skilfully transformed into a door which swung open to reveal a refrigerator well stocked with all the spirits that an international traveller might have acquired a taste for. It was an act of artistic vandalism and might just as well have concealed a television set. Bond was glad that it did not. He could develop a migraine by merely glancing at the lists of television channels in an American newspaper — or advertising catalogue, as he was wont to think of those publications. He bombarded the bottom of a tumbler with ice cubes and poured a generous measure of Virginia Gentleman over the glistening rocks. For his money it was the best Bourbon made outside Kentucky. The rich, brown liquid swirled enticingly and the ice danced and chinked as if engaged in some private celebration.

Bond let a first, generous mouthful of the liquor bite him in the back of the throat and then drank more slowly. There were still ten minutes before Drax’s butler was due to appear. He looked round the room, and his eye was attracted by the headboard of the bed. It was splendidly carved and the centrepiece showed two mermen in the act of besting a sea monster. The mouth of the monster was open and its head stood forward in relief from the rest of the carving. As an incitement to violent passion the piece perhaps had something to recommend it, though Bond thought it more likely that any occupants of the bed would be intimidated by the beast a couple of feet above their heads. There was something very life-like about its bulging eyes and rapacious rows of teeth. Bond remembered his childhood, and how he had screwed up his courage to dart his fingers into the open mouth of a stuffed alligator. In a gesture that was pure nostalgia, he crossed to the bed and pushed his fingers into the opening between the two rows of wooden teeth. He was surprised to feel something move.

Curiosity immediately aroused, he withdrew a thin metal pick from the lining of one of the Vuiton suitcases and after a few minutes’ probing succeeded in hooking out the object he had felt. It was a miniature microphone fastened to a lead that appeared to stretch down behind the bed. Bond looked at the appliance thoughtfully and then slipped it back into its hiding place. If it had been switched on, the sound of his probing would have been picked up and whoever was listening would guess that the microphone had been discovered. He wondered if Hugo Drax liked listening to people talking in their sleep or whether there were more voyeuristic reasons for the presence of the mike. Perhaps it was the accompaniment to some hidden camera positioned in the opposite wall. Whatever the explanation, it made Bond more eager than ever to be brought face to face with his host.

Bond had been examining the contents of the room for several minutes without finding anything when there came a second discreet tap at his door. He opened it to find himself face to face with a grey-haired man whose expression was knowing without being presumptuous, deferential with- out being humble, and dignified without being patrician. He wore black trousers, a black frock-coat and a dark grey waistcoat with horizontal stripes. His black bow tie was hand-knotted. He could only be Drax’s butler.

‘My name is Cavendish, sir. Mr Drax is awaiting you in his study.’

Bond nodded and followed the butler into the corridor. Cavendish led the way along the wide corridor and down a different but scarcely less imposing flight of steps to the one by which Bond had mounted. The sound of someone playing a Chopin waltz wafted up to meet them. Bond wondered who the pianist was. The technique was nearly flawless. Only in the matter of expression did the pianist leave something to be desired. There was an involuntary holding back; an inability to surrender completely to the liberated spirit of the music.

Cavendish crossed a hallway and the sound of the music grew louder. It was coming from the room they were approaching and stopped dramatically an instant before Cavendish swung open the door. ‘Mr Bond, sir.’

Bond stepped forward as a bearded figure rose from a distant piano. His first impression was of the size of the room. The word study suggested somewhere small and snug. Perhaps it was a residue of his schooldays but he had expected to find himself in a smallish room littered with open books and work in progress. A room that reflected something of a multi-millionaire’s myriad buOness activities. The only books in this room were the leather-bound volumes climbing to the ceiling in tiers. The room itself was the size of a small concert hall, but anything smaller would have been no-match for the man who was now threading his way ponderously through the antique furniture.

Hugo Drax was a large man with shoulders like an American footballer. He had a big square head and carrot red hair parted in the middle and flopping down awkwardly on each temple. His skin was pink and blotchy and this was particularly noticeable around the area of his right temple and cheek, which had clearly undergone plastic surgery. The skin was puckered, and shone unpleasantly like plastic that had started to melt. What could be seen of the right ear beneath the thatch of hair suggested that it had been badly mangled. The face had a lopsided look because one eye was larger than the other and Bond guessed that this was due to the contraction of skin that had been borrowed to build up the upper and lower eyelids.

Drax’s mouth was almost invisible behind a large bushy -moustache and his side whiskers grew down to the level of his ear lobes. There were irregular tufts of hair on his cheeks, and the whole appearance of his head was like that of an underwater object which has accumulated accretions of weed and vegetation.

By no standards could the work that had been done on Dtax’s face be deemed a success, and Bond decided that the plastic surgery must have been undertaken a long -time ago. Probably, when Drax was a young man and certainly before he could have afforded the finest treatment in the world. Perhaps the circumstances of the injury had precluded any treatment at all. Drax was probably in his late fifties. It was very feasible that he had been injured in the Second World War on a battle front where men were lucky to receive any medical attention, let alone have their faces rebuilt. Hugo Drax. Bond idly wondered which side he had been fighting on.

‘James Bond.’ The voice was a warm growl with the merest trace of an accent. ‘Forgive the immediate use of your Christian name but your reputation precedes you to the point where I feel I know you already.’

‘How do you do?’ Bond felt a huge, blunt hand close about his. He thought of these hands playing the Chopin and rejected once and for all the myth that artistic fingers are always long and sensitive.

‘I’m honoured that your government should have sent you on so delicate a mission.’ The tone had a mocking edge to it that made Bond’s hackles rise.

‘Delicate?’

‘To apologize in person for the loss of my space shuttle.’ The word ‘my’ was underlined. Drax turned aside peremptorily in a manner that was almost an affront, showing Bond his back as he picked up a pair of silver tongs and reached towards a silver tureen of the kind that Bond would have expected to hold devilled kidneys on a breakfast sideboard. Something stirred at the far end of the room and two enormous Dobermann pinschers followed the route their master had taken from the concert grand. They paused before Bond and looked at him as if wondering what he tasted like. Drax opened the tureen and removed two gobbets of raw meat, which he tossed in front of the dogs. They looked down at them and then up, expectantly, at Drax. He turned back to Bond, his face twisting into the shape of an ironic smile.

‘How would Oscar Wilde have put it? To lose one aircraft may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose two seems like carelessness.’

He snapped his fingers and the two dogs fell on the meat and were almost immediately licking the spot on the carpet where it had lain. Bond found the speed with which he was growing to dislike Hugo Drax almost alarming. There was a refilled vulgarity about the gesture with the tongs which offended him almost as much as the mocking, condescending tone and the desire to impress with the Wildean quotation. Bond’s voice was steely as he replied.