Win, Lose or Die (13 page)

Then life changed. There were cars and people. Men in uniform, others in plain clothes. Some dashed around to the rear of the villa, and through his singing ears, Bond thought he heard barking, then shots, from the garden.

Somehow he was back in the villa, sitting with the remnants of their Christmas meal still on the table, and a familiar figure was striding through the sliding doors.

“Dragon tooth, Captain Bond,” Clover Pennington said. “I’m sorry, but it was the only way, and it almost didn’t work. Can you hear me, sir? Dragontooth.”

Bond looked up at her with loathing and spat out, “Dragontooth, and all the other Demons of the Pit to you!” He even seemed to be cringing back against the chair, as though to get away from her.

Even though he had seen the ambulance people, firemen, and the police around the twisted and blackened shell that had once been the Fiat, James Bond could not take all of it in. Vaguely, in the far corner of his mind, he realised that he must be in shock, but every time he turned to Clover Pennington he expected to see the trim and bubbly Beatrice Maria da Ricci. He could not believe she was dead, even though Clover was spelling it out to him: slowly, as one explains to a child, and loudly as his ears still rang from the explosion.

“She was either “Cat’ or one of “Cat’s’ close accomplices,” Clover told him, time and time again. It was like being beaten over the head.

Occasionally a plainclothes man came to her, muttered in her ear and received a reply. “M had the staff here checked out. One of our people spotted there had been some kind of a switch when they saw the man called Franco in the gardens.

We went on full alert then. Nobody was sure of the situation.

That is until I spotted you with her yesterday.” Another couple of men came in through the french windows and spoke to her. Clover’s eyes flicked towards Bond, then away.

When the men left she said that, unhappily, the two men Beatrice had at the house had been killed in the firelight. “My orders were to be absolutely ruthless, though we had to try and get at least one of the team alive. Unhappily we didn’t manage it, and I’m uncertain whether the Ricci girl was the “Cat’ or not .

And she paused, embarrassed. “And I don’t know if we’ll ever get confirmation. She must have taken the full blast.

There’s nothing, or very little, left. Sorry,” she added, as though apologising.

Bond sat, staring into space as though he was taking nothing in.

“She gave me the right daily codes,” he said, his voice like that of a robot.

“They had the telephone in here wired. Picked it all up at the big villa.” Clover, in her pleated grey skirt, sweater and sensible shoes, felt she was still not really getting to him. “Captain Bond?

James? Sir?” she tried. But he still sat, staring into space.

Someone switched on the radio in the kitchen. “Have yourself a merry little Christmas,” the late Bing Crosby sang in English, and she saw Bond’s head lift, cocked to one side.

“Put that oft’ you clown!” Clover shouted, then turned back to Bond. “They’ve found the regular start’ and the watchers our people put in. At least they’re alive: gagged and bound in the wine cellars.

We’ll know more when our fellows provide their reports and descriptions. Now, I have to get you out of here, sir. Do you understand? We really do have to debrief you as well.”

Finally, Bond nodded, slowly, as though common sense had started to prevail. In his head, whenever someone made a noise, dropped something, or talked too loudly, he heard the deafening double-crump again, and clearly saw Beatrice smiling at him, pulling open the car door, then being engulfed by the explosion.

The ringing in his ears had turned into a permanent whine. He looked up at Clover Pennington. “I want to speak, personally, to M,” he said, coldly.

“Not yet, James - er sir. Not yet. We do have to move you on.

And we have to be very careful. M’s instructions are that you remain in deep cover. That’s essential. We have to drop you out of sight again so that you can re-emerge when you join The invincible, in just over a week.”

Bond made a gesture that signified he understood. Though this was not borne out by his next question - “If she was BAST, what happened?

Did they kill her by mistake?”

“Later, sir. Please. I really think it would be dangerous for you to stay on here. We have a helicopter coming in to pick you up.

They’ll take you to a secure base on the mainland. There’s a debriefing team standing by, and they have good doctors, in case you need medical .

“I’m not in need of doctors, First Officer Pennington.”

“With respect, sir, you need them to give you the once-over.”

There was the clattering sound of a helicopter, getting louder as it swept in from the sea to circle above the villa.

“I take the pistol, sir?” from one of the thick-set men in civilian clothes.

“Not on your life.” Bond was now becoming really angry.

“I’m not a child, nor am I about to do anything stupid.” He glared around him. “What’re we waiting for, then? Let’s go.”

Outside, hovering directly over the villa, an old Agusta chopper, carrying Italian Naval markings, began to descend.

One of Clover Pennington’s men gave hand-signals and they lowered a crewman with a harness, and winched Bond into the chopper. The last thing he looked at, as the helicopter turned away, heading for the coast, was the black, charred and twisted remains of the Fiat, and local police blockades at each end of the road.

An hour later he was inside a small military base, near Caserta.

Bond’s local geographic knowledge was enough to follow the route.

From the air, the base looked anything but military, with half a dozen oblong buildings, and a triple security perimeter: a sandwich of heavy-duty razor wire between two high chain-link fences. The guards at the main gates were armed but did not seem to be uniformed.

He was given a large, airy room, functional, with minimal comfort, a small bathroom and no TV or distracting pictures on the wall.

Somehow they had managed to pack his case at the villa and it now stood neatly just inside the door. Bond stretched out on the bed, placing the Browning within reach. At least they had not disarmed him. There were a dozen or so paperbacks in a pile on the night table, a couple of thrillers, one Deighton, a Greene, two thick Forsyths and a little assorted bunch which included Joyce’s Uljsses and a copy of War & Peace. He knew from his own strung-out state that he needed something to keep his mind working, but this was a bizarre little collection, and he felt very tired, too fatigued to read, but not enough flaked out to sleep. Anyway, he had read the lot, apart from an odd little thriller masterpiece by some unknown author boasting the title Moonlight and Bruises.

He played back the memory which blazed in his head. The Fiat, the steps, the wrought iron gates, Beatrice smiling and opening the car door, then being blotted out by the ball of fire.

No, was it his memory playing tricks? It was not really like that.

She waved and smiled. What next? The violence of the explosion throwing him back? No, something else. She was smiling and pulling the car door open. Smoke. There was a lot of smoke with the fireball, wind and crack-thump of the explosion. What kind of explosive could they have used that made so much smoke? It did not happen with Semtex or RDX. This was something he would have to report. It could be that some terrorist organisations were using a new type of explosive: or was it an old mixture which, with age, produced more smoke than usual?

Anyway, it had wiped out an unusually cold-blooded terrorist princess.

How many terrorist princesses does it take to wire up a time-bomb?

Three: one to get the wire, one to get the gold Rolex and one to call the expert. There was a tap on the door and he called “Come,” with one hand slipping off the Browning’s safety and turning the pistol towards the door.

The man was tall, dressed casually in slacks and a sweater.

He had the dark leathery looks of the Middle East, but his voice was pure Oxford English.

“Captain Bond?” he queried, though Bond got the distinct impression that he was merely adhering to some kind of ritual.

He nodded.

“Name’s Farsee.” He was in his forties, carried himself in an alert military manner, adjusting everything to make it seem as though he was pure civilian to the marrow. His laugh, when it came, lacked real humour. “Julian Farsee, though my friends call me Tomato. Play on words, kind of thing, you see. Tomato Farsee. Tomates Farcies - the old French stuffed tomatoes. See?”

“What’s bloody going on?” Bond asked, his voice brittle and with undertones of violence.

“The quacks want to give you a bit of a going over. I jut dropped in to see if you were feeling okay, and ready for that kind of thing, right?”

“And who exactly are you, Julian? Where are we; what are you; and what’s going on?”

“Well, I’m the Two I/C actually. Right?” (Two I/C was military for Second-in-Command, just like Jimmie The One, in the Royal Navy, stood for First Lieutenant, who could hold the rank of Commander or even Captain, depending on the Captain’s rank, which could even be Rear-Admiral. Some people found it confusing.) “You’re Second-in-Command of what, exactly?”

“This.” Farsee waved a hand in the direction of the window.

It was like prising a grape-pip from a peach. “And what is this?”

“Nobody told you?”

“If they had, I wouldn’t be asking you,Julian.”

“Oh, ya; right. We’re slightly irregular actually.”

“How irregular?”

“Comes under NATO installations, right? Highly classified, you might say. Very highly classified. We’re not even in the book, as they say, right?”

“More!” Bond almost shouted. He could stand Yuppies up to a point, but not Yuppie military.

“CO’s American, right?”

“CO of what?”

“We sort of handle things. Hide folk away when we don’t want the world to see them - or I should say when some of the intelligence people don’t want the world to see them.”

“Such as my self?”

“Ya. Oh, ya. Right, Captain Bond. Look, you ready for the medical examinations, eh?”

Bond gave a long sigh, then nodded. “Lead me to them.”

The doctors spent over three hours going over him. There was a general examination, and a few tests. The ENT specialist said he was lucky. “Eardrums’re intact. Miracle from what I hear.” This particular specialist was very much in the military mould.

Bond only became angry when they took him to a room in the hospital block that smelled strongly of psychiatrist. You could tell, first, by the pictures on the wall: light-grey skies and calm landscapes. Then there was the abundance of plant life. You could have been in Kew Gardens, and the young, very laid-back young man leaning in his adjustable Draberl chair, had about him an air of calm, laced heavily with deep anxiety. But it was the Rorschach test that clinched it. In his day, Bond had seen experts play with psychiatrists when they brought out the ink blots. He also knew the crazy and clever answers that gave an analyst the Rorschach protocol.

“Just look at each one, and tell me what you see.” The young man laid the ink blots on the desk one at a time. A butterfly that could be a praying mantis if you were dangerous enough; a kissing couple, which might just be a nasty weapon. Each time Bond told him the blot looked like a woman’s breasts, so when they finished the psychiatrist smiled - “You’re extracting the urine, aren’t you, Captain Bond?”

“In a word - yes. Look, doc, I’ve been through worse traumas than this in my time. Yes, I feel as most men do, after the sudden, destructive loss of a woman I’d come to care about. But I do know that it was all quick. Too quick. Immediately afterwards there was sorrow, and a little self-pity. Shock, if you like. Now I just feel very angry, Angry with myself for being such a prat.

Angry with them, for setting me up. Natural, isn’t it?”

The psychiatrist smiled and nodded. “On your way, Captain Bond.

Anger’s the healthiest reaction, so let’s not waste each other’s time.”

Bond did not reveal that he had a sneaking suspicion that another few strands of wool were being pulled over his eyes. That would come out in time. Give them enough rope, or wool for that matter.

Julian was waiting for him. “CO would like a word, I think, sir.

“A word, or several sentences?”

Julian whinnied, “Oh, ya,jolly good. Right. Ya.”

The buildings were quite long, brick structures, set as though some designer had just thrown six models at random inside the perimeter fencing. They were single storey and, while there were windows down each side, Bond had noted that the interior rooms had no windows at all, the natural light flowing only into corridors. In both the living-quarters and hospital there had been notices in several languages commanding people not to talk in the corridors. The conclusion was obvious. The inner rooms were shielded against all types of sound-stealing.

As they crossed the compound, he tried to identify the obvious uses of the buildings. One for staff’ one for senior staff’ the hospital; one sprouting every kind of antenna known to man, therefore the communications centre; a possible guest suite (the one in which he was quartered) and, at the furthest point from the entrance, the executive offices.

It sounded about right, as Julian was leading him towards this last building. Julian, Bond thought, was not such a stupid idiot as he had first appeared.

The Commanding Officer had a large room tucked neatly in the centre of a nest of other rooms within the executive offices.

Julian tapped at the door and a voice, distinctly American, possibly southern, called “Okay.” The voice was as slow and smooth as molasses.

“Captain James Bond, Royal Navy, sir.“Julian brayed. Bond painted a smile on his face and found himself alone in the room with the door closed and Julian left on the outside.

There were no potted plants here; and no soothing paintings.

Two maps covered one large wall - one of the local Italian area, and another of Europe. The second was highly detailed and contained a lot of military symbols. The remaining pictures were very United States gung-ho. Blackhawk and Chinook helicopters figured largely, and the Chinooks had combat-ready troops pouring out of the doors, while mortar bombs burst nearby.