Too Bad to Die (10 page)

T
he slender opium pipe was of black lacquer, set with silver and spinach jade. The silver was engraved with cranes in flight and had been chased by a master craftsman; the pipe was several centuries old. When it was no longer needed, it lay on a black lacquer rest. Carved in the base of the rest were three convex circles. These held the opium paste.

Chiang lay on a couch in his Mena House suite. He wore a dark blue silk robe embroidered with scarlet dragons. His eyes were fixed on the ceiling of the room, tracking visions through clouds of yellow smoke. There was nothing dreamy about the pinpoint pupils.

With his lean, regular features, his black hair silvering at the temples, his elegant frame, he cut a dashing figure by day; but in the evening, May-ling thought, shed of his Western uniform, he was magnificent.

In a bloodless and terrifying way.

When he was drugged like this, stilled by his visions, Chiang seemed at once dead and alive, like a demon-god of ancient times. Opium freed his deepest self, just as Western clothes shrouded it.

May-ling sat in her composed fashion in the main salon, legs tucked beneath her and teacup cradled in her hands. She had left the room in darkness, content to gaze at the Great Pyramid flooded with moonlight. It had been a good day. She had got free of him, and enjoyed herself, and though her legs were tired from climbing countless stone steps, her hands still tingled as she held the porcelain cup. Remembering the touch of Elliott's fingers on hers.

“Wife,” he sighed, the voice no more than a whisper, a faint thread of sound, like a summons from the spirit world.

Almost she did not answer it. She was never entirely sure he recognized her in the grip of opium. But when the summons came again she set down her cup.

“Husband,” she whispered, as she knelt by his bedside. She allowed her eyes to adjust. He was surrounded by flickering candles, their light unnaturally bright after the glow of the moon.

The pipe lay on its rest. His hands were folded slackly at his hips, but he lifted the right one and set it lightly on her shoulder, allowing it to slide like a falling leaf to her elbow.

“So beautiful,” he murmured. “Like rarest celadon.”

The voice was childlike with wonder; and she, who had never borne a child, felt her heart soften toward him.

“My concubine,” he crooned. “My whore.”

His eyes were still fixed on the ceiling, but he gripped her arm painfully now. She stiffened and tried to pull away. His head whipped around like a snake's.

“You are hungry for Roosevelt's son. You'd open your legs if he asked. You shamed me through Cairo today, dallying and laughing and swinging your hips.”

“No,” she cried. And wrenched her arm free.

“Kwang followed you.” He spat the three words. His bodyguard. A Kuomintang veteran.

“Kwang lies.”

“He knows shame when he sees it. He called you whore.”

“And you let him?”

He sat up.

The first blow was for the pipe. The flat of his left hand sent the precious thing skittering against the far wall.

The second was for May-ling.

She flew backward into the doorframe, hitting her skull hard. He was upon her in seconds, fingers clenched in her hair. He dragged her to the far side of the room and discarded her with the broken silver and jade. A fragment of lacquer bit into her palm.

“I renounced my wife for you,” he said between his teeth. “My concubines. And this is how you repay me. You parade like a slut before the leaders of the West. My enemies laugh at me.”

“The dishonor is yours,” she said clearly. She studied the pieces of shattered jade, not his face. “You believe a liar rather than your wife. Another man would have killed Kwang for his insolence.”

She expected a second blow. But to her surprise, Chiang laughed softly. “What would that get me? Nothing.”

May-ling looked at him directly then. “That's what it's always about, isn't it?
What you get.
”

“Yes.” He crouched down beside her. “And you have given me nothing. All these days in Cairo. All your smiles and swinging hips. I have no secrets I can sell. What good are you, wife?”

CAIRO AND TEHRAN

S
ATURDAY
,
N
OVEMBER
27, 1943

C
ommander. Commander Fleming.”

There were weights on Ian's eyelids, pennies for a dead man. He struggled to obey the Voice and raise them. But the light that penetrated was painful, and his vision was blurred. He closed his eyes again.

“He should do for a bit, now,” said the Voice. “When he's alert, give him something for the pain. He'll have a head on him.”

“Good.” A second man, vaguely familiar: “Leave some instructions for my housekeeper.”

“And I'll call again tomorrow. Don't hesitate to get in touch if there's anything—”

Ian was aware of a door closing. One voice would stop badgering him, at least.

Somebody crossed the room in a casual way. Ian could feel a presence looking down on him. It reminded him of Mokie. When he was young. Ill with fever. That detached, speculative look, hands in his pockets, as though Ian were a dead fish washed up in the Arnisdale gravel.

He opened his eyes and scowled into Alex Kirk's face.

It was neither a pleasant nor a repulsive one. The American ambassador to Egypt was fastidious, well groomed, pleasure-loving; his skin was smooth and carefully tended. It was possible, Ian thought, that he plucked his eyebrows. Not a stray hair anywhere. His tie was of an exquisite silk, expertly knotted. It was rumored that he liked young Egyptian boys.

“There you are.” Kirk drew up a chair and seated himself by Ian's bedside. “Headache?”

“A snorter.” The double vision was leveling out, which he found reassuring. “Somebody coshed me.”

“And stabbed you in the back.”

“I know.” He squinted and gazed around an unfamiliar room. “Where am I?”

“My villa. My gardener almost fell over you this morning. Right around sunrise. We figured this was the best place to bring you.”

Ian's mind groped its way back through a fug of half images and hallucinations. He had crawled out of underbrush. Or had he dreamed that? He remembered severe thirst and the heat of fever. Sand beneath his elbows. The conviction he was dying in the Sahara. He had fetched up near a stone fountain, driven there by the scent of water.

“Why not the PM's villa?” He tried to raise his arms, felt a stab of pain, and settled for lifting the left one. No sign of gravel burn, but then he had been wearing a dress uniform last night. “I crawled there. I'm sure of it.”

“You made it to the PM's garden. Must've come to sometime after the attack and tried your damnedest to reach civilization. Until you passed out again.”

“Concussed?”

“Sure. You also lost a lot of blood. Scalp wounds are a helluva mess, not to mention the cut in your back. The doctor's swell news is that the knife didn't reach your lung. Or anything else you might need.”

Kirk spoke soothingly, but Ian was unconvinced. He ought to be in the British villa, not the American. Apprehension curled in his gut.

“What time is it?” He tried to sit up, whistled
bloody hell
between his teeth, and settled cautiously back onto the mattress.

“Little after ten-thirty.”

“I have to get dressed.”

“Fleming.” Kirk smiled apologetically. “Relax. The planes already left. You've got no particular place to go.”

“You can't be serious.”

“'Fraid so.”

“
Bugger.
All of them? The PM? Miss Cowles?”

“Gone.”

“Your people, too?”

“Yep. Sorry.”

So Hudson had flown out a few hours ago. Without a hint of what was happening. He'd watch President Roosevelt roll straight into a Nazi killer's trap. Churchill, too—Ian hadn't even warned his own people! Christ—he hadn't sent so much as a memo to Grace or Ismay or, God help him, his chief, Rushbrooke—and now they were all flying, ignorant as babes, straight into their destruction. And it was his fault. Everybody would die—Hitler would win the war—and it was
his fault.

He tried to sit up again and settled for a stream of foul language.

“Your boss, old Rushbrooke, thought you ought to stay here,” Kirk explained. “I guess you're gonna be weak for a while. Your orders are to lie around for a few days, then head back to London.”

“No,” Ian said firmly. “That's what he wants. To get me out of the way.”

“Who? Rushbrooke?”

Ian glanced at Kirk. “The man who did this.”

“You mean you recognized the guy?”

“It was dark. And he came from behind.
My killer.
”

Kirk's eyebrow rose. “You're not exactly dead, buddy.”

“That's the oddest thing about it.”

Kirk placed a cool hand on his forehead. “You running a fever?”

“I'm entirely sane,” Ian snapped. “Be a sport, Alex, and give me a hand.”

Kirk supported Ian's good left shoulder and helped him ease to a sitting position. Ian's teeth were gritted against the pain, and sweat stood out on his forehead.

“I thought there was more to this than Rushbrooke let on,” Kirk said. “He told the rest of the delegation that you'd come down with bronchitis. Seemed a bit cagey to me. If you were mugged and robbed—why not just say so? It's not like it was going to happen to anyone else. They were all leaving.”

“I was robbed?”

“Your papers and money are missing. Even though the place had more guards last night than Fort Knox. I figure you were rolled by an enlisted guy. Nobody else could get in or out of this place. But that's why you're alive, Ian. Nobody'd kill a man for his passport and spare change.”

Ian did not argue with the ambassador. He said nothing about Nazi agents or a plot to assassinate the Big Three. Bletchley's decoded traffic was classified as ULTRA, and only a handful of people were allowed to see it. Kirk wasn't one of them.

Ian's head throbbed. He wanted to cut it off and lie down again in peace. It was tempting to accept that he was sidelined, out of combat, done with this.

Do you mean to say, 007, that you allowed yourself
to convalesce in comfort while Hitler murdered the only hope
for victory in this dreadful war?

You lay back and let the Nazis win?

“I appreciate all you've done, sir.” He turned the wretched granite of his skull carefully toward the ambassador. “But I have a few more favors to ask, I'm afraid.”

“Shoot.”

“I need my passport replaced as soon as possible. I need some cash. And I absolutely must send a cable.”

—

F
OUR HOURS LATER
he had managed to stand, swallow some morphia for the pain, vomit it immediately, and keep down a plate full of English breakfast. Eggs, broiled tomatoes, some sort of fish. Flatbread and blood oranges. Black coffee. It was the coffee that helped more than anything. Kirk had put brandy in it.

“I don't know how I'm gonna explain this to your folks,” the ambassador said gravely, staring through the louvered shutters of his villa. “Folks,” apparently, stood in for His Majesty's Government. Kirk was late for a luncheon he was hosting for some Egyptian ministers aboard his Nile houseboat, but he was wasting time talking to Ian. “I think you're nuts. I'll tell anybody who asks.”

“If I die honorably in the line of duty,” Ian said, “no one will blame you.”

The ambassador tossed a wallet full of money and a passport on the bed.

Ian glanced at the passport picture—his own—and the name on the papers.

“Who in bloody hell is James Bond?” he demanded.

Kirk shrugged. “Search me. Probably some poor guy who died chasing Rommel. It's the weekend, Fleming. Your embassy can't just gin up a passport on short notice. The official seals on that thing have to say
London.
They cobbled something together from your delegation snapshot and some old docs in their files. Be grateful. They did you a favor. Your ambassador, Lord Killearn, made a point of saying he knows your brother.”

“Everyone does,” Ian said.

“Yeah, well—he can't be any tougher than you are. There's not much money in that wallet, by the way. Banks are closed on the weekend, too. I think you got the sum total of the British embassy's petty cash.”

“Go to your party, Mr. Ambassador.”

“Most guys in your shoes would jump at a vacation.” Kirk turned in the doorway. “Particularly if they think they oughta be dead.”

He was shrewder than he looked. But Alex Kirk hadn't grown up with the ghost of a hero in his pocket. He didn't know what it was like to ask for commando training and get a briefcase instead. He'd never carried a secret bigger than himself. Every hour Ian wasted in Giza brought Winston Churchill and Roosevelt closer to death. Sick leave, on those terms, was treason.

Ian thanked the ambassador for his kindness, pocketed the wallet, the passport, and the rest of the morphia. Then he set about composing his cable.

By three o'clock Kirk's Signals people had sent it on to the American embassy, Tehran. It was addressed to Sam Schwartz. Roosevelt had told Ian to remember the name. It seemed like the right time to do it.

—

T
HE
B
RITISH
and the Americans had left from the desert airstrip in Giza, with their cars and their bodyguards and their chiefs following behind in separate transports. But Ian needed to hire a pilot: a lone fellow in a small plane capable of crossing fifteen hundred miles of Arabian Desert and the Persian Gulf. He might find him in Cairo, but first he must find Nazir.

The Fencer had tried to silence Ian.
But he had not killed him.
Unconscious, bleeding, alone in the dark—Ian ought to have been finished off. Instead, he was alive.

He found this troubling and strange. It was one of Alan Turing's much-vaunted contradictions, but so far it failed to explain anything.

Did Hitler's prize agent hate to kill with his own hands? Or was he keeping Ian alive out of vanity—to prolong a secret contest? Ian thought perhaps Nazir would know.

The Russian had given him a card engraved in beautiful flowing Arabic with a French translation beneath; the address of his antiquities shop was on the reverse. The Mena House driver who'd agreed to take Ian to Cairo grunted when he saw it. He glanced at Ian assessingly. Was he familiar with the NKVD chief's name? Part of Nazir's intelligence network?

They drove north through the late afternoon, the sun setting over the desert on Ian's left hand. Within half an hour they had reached the Nile. Wooden feluccas with their heavy centerboards were anchoring for the night, furling patched sails of Egyptian cotton. Brown boys with wide trousers hitched above the knees waded with fishing nets in the shallows, calling like birds across the water. Ian's driver crossed the ancient river and Gezira Island, where the six-furlong track and the golf course were oases of green in the fading light. Then into the narrow streets and clustered houses of Old Cairo. Prostitutes, remarkable because unveiled, lingered in the doorways behind the old train station.

The driver jogged left, jogged right. Slowed to a crawl as donkey carts struggled for position ahead and behind. The driver leaned on his horn. There was a camel. Another camel. An official car with a siren parked askew on the narrow paving, and three men in uniform with their arms outstretched.

“This is the shop,
effendi,
” the driver said with a gesture. “But I do not think we should stop. See, trouble. The gendarmes.”

“Wait for me,” Ian said, and handed him a British pound. In war, hard currency was treasure. The man would wait.

He eased himself painfully out of the backseat and made his way to the police. He was as weak as Alex Kirk said he would be. Stars burst before his eyes. He would find a pilot in the bar at Shepheard's and drink on the deal. Then he would take morphia and sleep most of the night while they crossed the Arabian Peninsula.

One of the police—he had a square-jawed face and pronounced nose over a full bottlebrush mustache—said something in Arabic and held up his hand. This was universal for “Halt,” and Ian halted. He tried English; Egypt had been in British hands long enough that the police must speak it.

“The shop. My friend owns it. What has happened?”

“The shop is closed.”

“But I must speak to my friend. It is urgent.” Ian drew some piastres from his pocket and placed them in the policeman's open palm. “War business. Will you send him out to me?”

“What is your friend's name?”

“Nazir.”

Mirth bubbled faintly in the policeman's dark brown eyes. He pocketed Ian's offering. “I regret to say your friend cannot speak to you this afternoon.”

“Is he being detained?”

“He is dead,
effendi
.”

Ian took a step backward. “When?”

The man shrugged. “He was found three hours ago.”

“How did he die?”

The policeman's eyes were already moving past Ian to the crowd that refused to disperse. Ian dug in his pocket for more piastres.

“His throat was cut,” the man said. “This Nazir dealt in many beautiful things. Many stolen things, you understand. From the tombs in the desert. It is not surprising someone killed him.”

No. Not entirely surprising. But Ian found himself remembering the urbane chuckle of the gray-haired man with the saffron pocket square, who had taken his vodka martini shaken, not stirred. He had been so thoroughly alive twenty-four hours ago. So thoroughly at home in Shepheard's bar.

“The girl,” Ian said. “His granddaughter. What happened to her?”

The policeman studied Ian with contempt. “I know nothing of any girl. Your driver is blocking the street. You will move along,
effendi
?”