James Bond Anthology (272 page)

‘Satisfied?’

‘You look absolutely wonderful. But now for God’s sake tell me how you happened to be at Samaden. It was a bloody miracle. It saved my life.’

‘All right. But then you tell. I’ve never seen a man look so dead on his feet. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I thought you must be plastered.’ She gave him a quick glance. ‘You still look pretty bad. Here’ – she leant forward to the dashboard – ‘I’ll switch on the blower. Get you properly warmed up.’ She paused. ‘Well, my bit of the story’s quite simple really. Papa rang me up one day from Marseilles to find out how I was. He asked if I had seen you and seemed very annoyed when he heard I hadn’t. He practically ordered me to go and find you.’ She glanced at him. ‘He’s quite taken to you, you know. Anyway he said he had found out the address of a certain man you were looking for. He said he was sure that by now you would have found out that address too. He said that, knowing you, I would find you somewhere close to this address. It was the Piz Gloria Club. He told me if I found you to tell you to watch your step, to look after yourself.’ She laughed. ‘How right he was! Well, so I left Davos, which had really put me on my feet again, like you said it would, and I came up to Samaden the day before yesterday. The Seilbahn wasn’t running yesterday, so I was going to come up today to look for you. It was all as simple as that. Now you tell.’

They had been keeping up a good speed down the sloping, winding road into the valley. Bond turned to look through the rear window. He swore under his breath. Perhaps a mile behind, twin lights were coming after them. The girl said, ‘I know. I’ve been watching in the mirror. I’m afraid they’re gaining a little. Must be a good driver who knows the road. Probably got snow-chains. But I think I can hold them. Now go on. What have you been up to?’

Bond gave her a garbled version. There was a big gangster up the mountain, living under a false name. He was wanted by the police in England. Bond was vaguely connected with the police, with the Ministry of Defence. (She snorted, ‘Don’t try and fool me. I know you’re in the Secret Service. Papa told me so.’ Bond said curtly, ‘Well, Papa’s talking through his hat.’ She laughed knowingly.) Anyway, Bond continued, he had been sent out to make sure this was the man they wanted. He had found out that he was. But the man had become suspicious of Bond and Bond had had to get out quickly. He gave her a graphic account of the moonlit nightmare of the mountain, of the avalanche, of the man who had been killed by the train, of how he had got to Samaden, dead beat, and had tried to hide in the crowd on the skating-rink. ‘And then,’ he ended lamely, ‘you turned up like a beautiful angel on skates, and here we are.’

She thought the story over for a minute. Then she said calmly, ‘And now, my darling James, just tell me how many of them you killed. And tell me the truth.’

‘Why?’

‘I’m just curious.’

‘You promise to keep this between you and me?’

She said enigmatically, ‘Of course. Everything’s between you and me from now on.’

‘Well, there was the main guard at the so-called Club. That had to be done or I’d be dead myself by now. Then I suppose one got caught by the avalanche. Then, at the bottom, one of them shot at me and I had to spear him with my ski-stick – self-defence. I don’t know how badly he’s hurt. And then there was the man killed by the train. He’d fired six shots at me. And anyway it was his own fault. Let’s say three and a half got themselves killed one way or another.’

‘How many are left?’

‘What are you getting at?’

‘I just want to know. Trust me.’

‘Well, I think there were about fifteen up there all told. So that leaves eleven and a half – plus the big man.’

‘And there are three in the car behind? Would they kill us if they caught us?’

‘I’m afraid so. I haven’t got any weapons. I’m sorry, Tracy, but I’m afraid you wouldn’t have much chance either, being a witness and a sort of accomplice of mine. These people think I’m pretty bad news for them.’

‘And you are?’

‘Yes. From now on, I’m the worst.’

‘Well, I’ve got pretty bad news for you. They’re gaining on us and I’ve only got a couple of gallons left in the tank. We’ll have to stop in Filisur. There won’t be a garage open and it’ll mean waking someone up. Can’t hope to do it under ten minutes and they’ll have us. You’ll have to think up something clever.’

There was a ravine and an S turn over a bridge. They were coming out of the first curve over the bridge. Lights blazed at them from across the ravine. There was half a mile between the two cars, but the range across the ravine was perhaps only three hundred yards. Bond wasn’t surprised to see the familiar blue flames flutter from the front of the car. Chips of granite from the overhang splattered down on the bonnet of the car. Then they were into the second half of the S bend and out of sight of their pursuers.

Now came a stretch of reconstruction work where there had been a landslide. There were big warning notices: ‘Achtung! Baustelle! Vorsichtig Fahren!’ The broken road hugged the mountain side on the right. On the left was rickety fencing and then a precipice falling hundreds of feet down into a gorge with an ice-floed river. In the middle of the bad stretch, a huge red wooden arrow pointed right to a narrow track across a temporary bridge. Bond suddenly shouted ‘Stop!’

Tracy pulled up, her front wheels on the bridge. Bond tore open the door. ‘Get on! Wait for me round the next corner. It’s the only chance.’

Good girl! She got going without a word. Bond ran back the few yards to the big red arrow. It was held in the forks of two upright poles. Bond wrenched it off, swung it round so that it pointed to the left, towards the flimsy fence that closed off the yards of old road leading to the collapsed bridge. Bond tore at the fence, pulling the stakes out, flattening it. Glare showed round the corner behind him. He leaped across the temporary road into the shadow of the mountain, flattened himself against it, waited, holding his breath.

The Mercedes was coming faster than it should over the bumpy track, its chains clattering inside the mudguards. It made straight for the black opening to which the arrow now pointed. Bond caught a glimpse of white, strained faces and then the desperate scream of brakes as the driver saw the abyss in front of him. The car seemed almost to stop, but its front wheels must have been over the edge. It balanced for a moment on its iron belly and then slowly, slowly toppled and there was a first appalling crash as it hit the rubble beneath the old bridge. Then another crash and another. Bond ran forward past the lying arrow and looked down. Now the car was flying upside-down through the air. It hit again and a fountain of sparks flashed from a rock ledge. Then, somersaulting, and with its lights somehow still blazing, it smashed on down into the gorge. It hit a last outcrop that knocked it sideways and, spinning laterally, but now with its lights out and only the glint of the moon on metal, it took the last great plunge into the iced-up river. A deep rumble echoed up from the gorge and there was the patter of rocks and stones following the wreckage. And then all was peaceful, moonlit silence.

Bond let out his breath in a quiet hiss between his clenched teeth. Then, mechanically, he straightened things out again, put up the remains of the fence, lifted the arrow, and put it back facing to the right. Then he wiped his sweating hands down the side of his trousers and walked unsteadily down the road and round the next corner.

The little white car was there, pulled in to the side, with its lights out. Bond got in and slumped into his seat. Tracy said nothing but got the car going. The lights of Filisur appeared, warm and yellow in the valley below. She reached out a hand and held his tightly. ‘You’ve had enough for one day. Go to sleep. I’ll get you to Zürich. Please do what I say.’

Bond said nothing. He pressed her hand weakly, leaned his head against the door jamb and was instantly asleep.

He was out for the count.

19 | LOVE FOR BREAKFAST

In the grey dawn, Zürich airport was depressing and almost deserted, but, blessedly, there was a Swissair Caravelle, delayed by fog at London Airport, waiting to take off for London. Bond parked Tracy in the restaurant and, regretfully forsaking the smell of coffee and fried eggs, went and bought himself a ticket, had his passport stamped by a sleepy official (he had half expected to be stopped, but wasn’t), and went to a telephone booth and shut himself in. He looked up Universal Export in the telephone book, and read underneath, as he had hoped, ‘Hauptvertreter Alexander Muir. Privat Wohnung’ and the number. Bond glanced through the glass window at the clock in the departure hall. Six o’clock. Well, Muir would just have to take it.

He rang the number and, after minutes, a sleepy voice said, ‘Ja! Hier Muir.’

Bond said, ‘Sorry, 410, but this is 007. I’m calling from the airport. This is bloody urgent so I’ll have to take a chance on your line being bugged. Got a paper and pencil?’

The voice at the other end had grown brisker. ‘Hang on, 007. Yes, got it. Go ahead.’

‘First of all I’ve got some bad news. Your Number Two has had it. Almost for sure. Can’t give you any details over this line, but I’m off to London in about an hour – Swissair Flight 110 – and I’ll signal the dope back straight away. Could you put that on the teleprinter? Right. Now I’m guessing that in the next day or so a party of ten girls, British, will be coming in here by helicopter from the Engadine. Yellow Sud Aviation Alouette. I’ll be teleprinting their names back from London some time today. My bet is they’ll be flying to England, probably on different flights and perhaps to Prestwick and Gatwick as well as London Airport, if you’ve any planes using those airports. Anyway, I guess they’ll be dispersed. Now, I think it may be very important to tell London their flight numbers and E.T.A. Rather a big job, but I’ll get you authority in a few hours to use men from Berne and Geneva to lend a hand. Got it? Right. Now I’m pretty certain you’re blown. Remember the old Operation Bedlam that’s just been cancelled? Well, it’s him and he’s got radio and he’ll probably have guessed I’d be contacting you this morning. Just take a look out of the window and see if there’s any sign of watchers. He’s certainly got his men in Zürich.’

‘Christ, what a shambles!’ The voice at the other end was tight with tension. ‘Hang on.’ There was a pause. Bond could visualize Muir, whom he didn’t know except as a number, going over to the window, carefully drawing aside the curtain. Muir came back on the wire.

‘Looks damn like it. There’s a black Porsche across the road. Two men in it. I’ll get my friends in the Sécurité to chase them away.’

Bond said, ‘Be careful how you go about it. My guess is that our man has got a pretty good fix in with the police. Anyway, put all this on the telex to M. personally, would you? Ciphered of course. And tell him if I get back in one piece I must see him today, with 501 [the Chief Scientific Officer to the Service] and if possible with someone in the same line of business from the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries. Sounds daft, but there it is. It’s going to upset their paper hats and Christmas pudding, but I can’t help that. Can you manage all that? Good lad. Any questions?’

‘Sure I oughtn’t to come out to the airport and get some more about my Number Two? He was tailing one of Redland’s men. Chap’s been buying some pretty odd stuff from the local rep. of Badische Anilin. Number Two thought it seemed damned fishy. Didn’t tell me what the stuff was. Just thought he’d better see where it was being delivered to.’

‘I thought it must be some kind of a spiel like that. No. You stay away from me. I’m hot as a pistol, going to be hotter later in the day when they find a certain Mercedes at the bottom of a precipice. I’ll get off the line now. Sorry to have wrecked your Christmas. ’Bye.’

Bond put down the receiver and went up to the restaurant. Tracy had been watching the door. Her face lit up when she saw him. He sat down very close to her and took her hand, a typical airport farewell couple. He ordered plenty of scrambled eggs and coffee. ‘It’s all right, Tracy. I’ve fixed everything at my end. But now about you. That car of yours is going to be bad news. There’ll be people who’ll have seen you drive away with the Mercedes on your tail. There always are, even at midnight on Christmas Eve. And the big man on top of the mountain has got his men down here too. You’d better finish your breakfast and get the hell on over the frontier. Which is the nearest?’

‘Schaffhausen or Konstanz, I suppose, but’ – she pleaded – ‘James, do I have to leave you now? It’s been so long waiting for you. And I have done well, haven’t I? Why do you want to punish me?’ Tears, that would never have been there in the Royale days, sparkled in her eyes. She wiped them angrily away with the back of her hand.

Bond suddenly thought, Hell! I’ll never find another girl like this one. She’s got everything I’ve looked for in a woman, She’s beautiful, in bed and out. She’s adventurous, brave, resourceful. She’s exciting always. She seems to love me. She’d let me go on with my life. She’s a lone girl, not cluttered up with friends, relations, belongings. Above all, she needs me. It’ll be someone for me to look after. I’m fed up with all these untidy, casual affairs that leave me with a bad conscience. I wouldn’t mind having children. I’ve got no social background into which she would or wouldn’t fit. We’re two of a pair, really. Why not make it for always?

Bond found his voice saying those words that he had never said in his life before, never expected to say.

‘Tracy. I love you. Will you marry me?’