Moonraker (8 page)

Then he turned away from the table and walked swiftly out of the room.

PART TWO: TUESDAY, WEDNESDAY

Moonraker

CHAPTER VIII

THE RED TELEPHONE

ALTHOUGH HE had not got to bed until two, Bond walked into his headquarters punctually at ten the next morning. He was feeling dreadful. As well as acidity and liver as a result of drinking nearly two whole bottles of champagne, he had a touch of the melancholy and spiritual deflation that were partly the after-effects of the benzedrine and partly reaction to the drama of the night before.

When he went up in the lift towards another routine day, the bitter taste of the midnight hours was still with him.

After Meyer had scuttled thankfully off to bed, Bond had taken the two packs of cards out of the pockets of his coat and had put them on the table in front of Basildon and M. One was the blue pack that Drax had cut to him and that he had pocketed, substituting instead, under cover of his handkerchief, the stacked blue pack in his right-hand pocket. The other was the stacked red pack in his left-hand pocket which had not been needed.

He fanned the red pack out on the table and showed M. and Basildon that it would have produced the same freak grand slam that had defeated Drax.

“It’s a famous Culbertson hand,” he explained. “He used it to spoof his own quick-trick conventions. I had to doctor a red and a blue pack. Couldn’t know which colour I would be dealing with.”

“Well, it certainly went with a bang,” said Basildon gratefully. “I expect he’ll put two and two together and either stay away or play straight in future. Expensive evening for him. Don’t let’s have any arguments about your winnings,” he added. “You’ve done everyone-and particularly Drax-a good turn tonight. Things might have gone wrong. Then it would have been your fingers that would have got burned. Cheque will reach you on Saturday.”

They had said good-night and Bond, in a mood of anticlimax, had gone off to bed. He had taken a mild sleeping pill to try and clear his mind of the bizarre events of the evening and prepare himself for the morning and the office. Before he slept he reflected, as he had often reflected in other moments of triumph at the card table, that the gain to the winner is, in some odd way, always less than the loss to the loser.

When he closed the door behind him Loelia Ponsonby looked curiously at the dark shadows under his eyes. He noticed the glance, as she had intended.

He grinned. “Partly work and partly play,” he explained. “In strictly masculine company,” he added. “And thanks very much for the benzedrine. It really was badly needed. Hope I didn’t interfere with your evening?”

“Of course not,” she said, thinking of the dinner and the library book she had abandoned when Bond telephoned. She looked down at her shorthand pad. “The Chief of Staff telephoned half an hour ago. He said that M. would be wanting you today. He couldn’t say when. I told him that you’ve got Unarmed Combat at three and he said to cancel it. That’s all, except the dockets left over from yesterday.”

“Thank heavens,” said Bond. “I couldn’t have stood being thrown about by that dam’ Commando chap today. Any news of 008?”

“Yes,” she said. “They say he’s all right. He’s been moved to the military hospital at Wahnerheide. Apparently it’s only shock.”

Bond knew what ’shock’ might mean in his profession. “Good,” he said without conviction. He smiled at her and went into his office and closed the door.

He walked decisively round his desk to the chair, sat down, and pulled the top file towards him. Monday was gone. This was Tuesday. A new day. Closing his mind to his headache and to thoughts about the night, he lit a cigarette and opened the brown folder with the Top Secret red star on it. It was a memorandum from the Office of the Chief Preventive Officer of the United States Customs Branch and it was headed The Inspectoscope.

He focused his eyes.

‘The Inspectoscope,’ he read, ‘is an instrument using fluoroscopic principles for the detection of contraband. It is manufactured by the Sicular Inspectoscope Company of San Francisco and is widely used in American prisons for the secret detection of metal objects concealed in the clothing or on the person of criminals and prison visitors. It is also used in the detection of IDE (Illicit Diamond Buying) and diamond smuggling in the diamond fields of Africa and Brazil. The instrument costs seven thousand dollars, is approximately eight feet long by seven feet high and weighs nearly three tons. It requires two trained operators. Experiments have been made with this instrument in the customs hall of the International Airport at Idlewild with the following results…’

Bond skipped two pages containing details of a number of petty smuggling cases and studied the ‘Summary of Conclusions’ from which he deduced, with some irritation, that he would have to think of some place other than his armpit for carrying his .25 Beretta the next time he travelled abroad. He made a mental note to discuss the problem with the Technical Devices Section.

He ticked and initialled the distribution slip and automatically reached for the next folder entitled Philopon. A Japanese murder-drug.

‘Philopon’, his mind was trying to wander and he dragged it sharply back to the typewritten pages.

‘Philopon is the chief factor in the increase in crime in Japan. According to the Welfare Ministry there are now 1,500,000 addicts in the country, of whom one million are under the age of 20, and the Tokyo Metropolitan Police attribute 70 per cent of juvenile crime to the influences of the drug.

‘Addiction, as in the case of marijuana in the United States, begins with one “shot”. The effect is “stimulating” and the drug is habit-forming. It is also cheap-about ten yen (sixpence) a shot-and the addict rapidly increases his shots to the neighbourhood of one hundred a day. In these quantities the addiction becomes expensive and the victim automatically turns to crime to pay for the drug. That the crime often includes physical assault and murder is due to a peculiar property of the drug. It induces an acute persecution complex in the addict who becomes prey to the illusion that people want to kill him and that he is always being followed with harmful intent. He will turn with his feet and fists, or with a razor, on a stranger in the streets who he thinks has scrutinized him offensively. Less advanced addicts tend to avoid an old friend who has reached the one hundred shots a day dosage, and this of course merely increases his feeling of persecution.

‘In this way murder becomes an act of self-defence, virtuous and justified, and it will readily be seen what a dangerous weapon it can become in the handling and direction of organized crime by a “master-mind”.

Thilopon has been traced as the motive power behind the notorious Bar Mecca murder case and as a result of that unpleasant affair the police rounded up more than 5000 purveyors of the drug in a matter of weeks.

‘As usual Korean nationals are being blamed…”

Suddenly Bond rebelled. What the hell was he doing reading all this stuff? When would he conceivably require to know about a Japanese murder-drug called Philopon?

Inattentively he skimmed through the remaining pages, ticked himself off the distribution slip, and threw the docket into his out-tray.

His headache was still sitting over his right eye as if it had been nailed there. He opened one of the drawers of his desk and took out a bottle of Phensic. He considered asking his secretary for a glass of water, but he disliked being cossetted. With distaste he crunched two tablets between his teeth and swallowed down the harsh powder.

Then he lit a cigarette and got up and stood by the window. He looked across the green panorama far below him and, without seeing it, let his eyes wander aimlessly along the jagged horizon of London while his mind focused on the strange events of the night before.

And the more he thought about it, the stranger it all seemed.

Why should Drax, a millionaire, a public hero, a man with a unique position in the country, why should this remarkable man cheat at cards? What could he achieve by it? What could he prove to himself? Did he think that he was so much a law unto himself, so far above the common herd and their puny canons of behaviour that he could spit in the face of public opinion?

Bond’s mind paused. Spit in their faces. That just about described his manner at Blades. The combination of superiority and scorn. As if he was dealing with human muck so far beneath contempt that there was no need to put up even a pretence of decent behaviour in its company.

Presumably Drax enjoyed gambling. Perhaps it eased the tensions in him, the tensions that showed in his harsh voice, his nail-biting, the constant sweating. But he mustn’t lose. It would be contemptible to lose to these inferior people. So, at whatever risk, he must cheat his way to victory. As for the possibility of detection, presumably he thought that he could bluster his way out of any corner. If he thought about it at all. And people with obsessions, reflected Bond, were blind to danger. They even courted it in a perverse way. Kleptomaniacs would try to steal more and more difficult objects. Sex maniacs would parade their importunities as if they were longing to be arrested. Pyromaniacs often made no attempt to avoid being linked with their fire-raising.

But what obsession was it that was consuming this man? What was the origin of the compulsive urge that was driving him down the steep hill into the sea?

All the signs pointed to paranoia. Delusions of grandeur and, behind that, of persecution. The contempt in his face. The bullying voice. The expression of secret triumph with which he had met defeat after a moment of bitter collapse. . The triumph of the maniac who knows that whatever the facts may say he is right. Whoever may try to thwart him he can overcome. For him there is no defeat because of his secret power. He knows how to make gold. He can fly like a bird. He is almighty-the man in the padded cell who is God. Yes, thought Bond, gazing blindly out over Regent’s Park. That is the solution. Sir Hugo Drax is a raving paranoiac. That is the power which has driven him on, by devious routes, to make his millions. That is the mainspring of the gift to England of this giant rocket that will annihilate our enemies. Thanks to the all-powerful Drax.

But who can tell how near to breaking-point this man is? Who has penetrated behind that bluster, behind all that red hair on his face, who has read the signs as more than the effect of his humble origins or of sensitivity about his war wounds?

Apparently no one. Then was he, Bond, right in his analysis? What was it based on? Was this glimpse through a shuttered window into a man’s soul sufficient evidence? Perhaps others had caught such a glimpse. Perhaps there had been other moments of supreme tension in Singapore, Hong Kong, Nigeria, Tangier, when some merchant sitting across a table from Drax had noticed the sweat and the bitten nails and the red blaze of the eyes in the face from which all the blood had suddenly been drained.

If one had time, thought Bond, one ought to seek those people out, if they existed, and really find out about this man, perhaps get him in the killing-bottle before it was too late.

Too late? Bond smiled to himself. What was he being so dramatic about? What had this man done to him? Made him a present of £15,000. Bond shrugged. It was none of his business anyway. But that last remark of his, ‘Spend it quickly, Commander Bond.’ What had he meant by that? It must be those words, Bond reflected, that had stayed in the back of his mind and made him ponder so carefully over the problem of Drax.

Bond turned brusquely away from the window. To hell with it, he thought. I’m getting obsessed myself. Now then. Fifteen thousand pounds. A miraculous windfall. All right then, he would spend it quickly. He sat down at his desk and picked up a pencil. He thought for a moment and then wrote carefully on a memorandum pad headed ‘Top Secret’:

(1) Rolls-Bentley Convertible, say £5000.

(2) Three diamond clips at £250 each, £750.

He paused. That still left nearly £10,000. Some clothes, paint the flat, a set of the new Henry Cotton irons, a few dozen of the Taittinger champagne. But those could wait. He would go that afternoon and buy the clips and talk to Bentleys. Put all the rest into gold shares. Make a fortune. Retire.

In angry protest the red telephone splintered the silence “Can you come up? M. wants you.” It was the Chief of Staff, speaking urgently.

“Coming,” said Bond, suddenly alert. “Any clue?”

“Search me,” said the Chief of Staff. “Hasn’t touched his signals yet. Been over at the Yard and the Ministry of Supply all the morning.”

He rang off.

Moonraker

CHAPTER IX

TAKE IT FROM HERE

A FEW minutes later Bond was walking through the familiar door and the green light had gone on over the entrance. M. looked sharply at him. “You look pretty dreadful, 007,” he said. “Sit down.”

It’s business, thought Bond, his pulse quickening. No Christian names today. He sat down. M. was studying some pencilled notes on a scratch-pad. He looked up. His eyes were no longer interested in Bond.

“Trouble down at Drax’s plant last night,” he said. “Double killing. Police tried to get hold of Drax. Didn’t think of Blades apparently. Caught up with him when he got back to the Ritz about half-past one this morning. Two men from the Moonraker got shot in a public house near the plant. Both dead. Drax told the police he couldn’t care less and then hung up. Typical of the man. He’s down there now. Taking the thing a bit more seriously, I gather.”

“Curious coincidence,” said Bond thoughtfully. “But where do we come in, sir? Isn’t it a police job?”

“Partly,” said M., “but it happens that we’re responsible for a lot of the key personnel down there. Germans,” he added. “I’d better explain.” He looked down at his pad. “It’s an RAF establishment and the cover-plan is that it’s part of the big radar network along the East Coast. The RAF are responsible for guarding the perimeter and the Ministry of Supply only has authority at the centre where the work is going on. It’s on the edge of the cliffs between Dover and Deal. The whole area covers about a thousand acres, but the site itself is about two hundred. On the site there are only Drax and fifty-two others left. All the construction team have gone.”

Pack of cards and a joker, reflected Bond. “Fifty of these are Germans,” continued M. “More or less all the guided missile experts the Russians didn’t get. Drax paid for them to come over here and work on the Moonraker. Nobody was very happy with the arrangement but there was no alternative. The Ministry of Supply couldn’t spare any of their experts from Woomera. Drax had to find his men where he could. To strengthen the RAF security people, the Ministry of Supply appointed their own security officer to live on the site. Man called Major Tallon.”

M. paused and looked up at the ceiling.

“He was one of the two who got killed last night. Shot by one of the Germans, who then shot himself.”

M. lowered his eyes and looked at Bond. Bond said nothing, waiting for the rest of the story.

“It happened in a public house near the site. Plenty of witnesses. Apparently it’s an inn on the edge of the site that is in bounds to the men. Must have somewhere to go to, I suppose.” M. paused. He kept his eyes on Bond. “Now you asked where we come in on all this. We come in because we cleared this particular German, and all the others, before they were allowed to come over here. We’ve got the dossiers of all of them. So when this happened the first thing RAF Security and Scotland Yard wanted was the dossier of the dead man. They got on to the Duty Officer last night and he dug the papers out of Records and sent them over to the Yard. Routine job. He noted it in the log. When I got here this morning and saw the entry in the log I suddenly got interested.” M. spoke quietly. “After spending the evening with Drax, it was, as you remarked, a curious coincidence.”

“Very curious, sir,” said Bond, still waiting.

“And there’s one more thing,” concluded M. “And this is the real reason why I’ve let myself get involved instead of keeping clear of the whole business. This has got to take priority over everything.” M.’s voice was very quiet. “They’re going to fire the Moonraker on Friday. Less than four days’ time. Practice shoot.”

M. paused and reached for his pipe and busied himself lighting it.

Bond said nothing. He still couldn’t see what all this had to do with the Secret Service whose jurisdiction runs only outside the United Kingdom. It seemed a job for the Special Branch of Scotland Yard, or conceivably for MI5. He waited. He looked at his watch. It was noon.

M. got his pipe going and continued.

“But quite apart from that,” said M., “I got interested because last night I got interested in Drax.”

“So did I, sir,” said Bond.

“So when I read the log,” said M., ignoring Bond’s comment, “I telephoned Vallance at the Yard and asked him what it was all about. He was rather worried and asked me to come over. I said I didn’t want to tread on Five’s corns but he said he had already spoken to them. They maintained it was a matter between my department and the police since it was we who had cleared the German who did the killing. So I went along.”

M. paused and looked down at his notes.

“The place is on the coast about three miles north of Dover,” he said. “There’s this inn nearby on the main coast road, the ‘World without Want’, and the men from the site go there in the evening. Last night, about seven-thirty, the Security man from the Ministry, this man Tallon, went along there and was having a whisky and soda and chatting away with some of the Germans when the murderer, if you like to call him that, came in and walked straight up to Tallon. He pulled out a Luger-no serial numbers by the way-out of his shirt and said,” M. looked up, ‘”I love Gala Brand. You shall not have her.’ Then he shot Tallon through the heart and put the smoking gun in his own mouth and pulled the trigger.”

“What a ghastly business,” said Bond. He could see every detail of the shambles in the crowded taproom of a typical English public house. “Who’s the girl?”

“That’s another complication,” said M. “She’s an agent of the Special Branch. Bilingual in German. One of Val-lance’s best girls. She and Tallon were the only two non-Germans Drax had with him on the site. Vallance is a suspicious chap. Has to be. This Moonraker plan is obviously the most important thing happening in England. Without telling anyone and acting more or less on instinct, he planted this Brand girl on Drax and somehow fixed for her to be taken on as his private secretary. Been on the site since the beginning. She’s had absolutely nothing to report. Says that Drax is an excellent chief, except for his manners, and drives his men like hell. Apparently he started by making passes at her, even after she’d spun the usual yarn about being engaged, but after she’d shown she could defend herself, which of course she can, he gave up and she says they’re perfectly good friends. Naturally she knew Tallon, but he was old enough to be her father, besides being happily married with four children, and she told Vallance’s man who got a word with her this morning that he’s taken her to the cinema in a paternal sort of way twice in eighteen months. As for the killer, man called Egon Bartsch, he was an electronics expert whom she barely knew by sight.”

“What do his friends say about all this?” asked Bond.

“The man who shared his room with him backs up Bartsch. Says he was madly in love with the Brand woman and put his whole lack of success down to ‘The Englishman’. He says Bartsch had been getting very moody and reserved lately and that he wasn’t a bit surprised to hear of the shooting.”

“Sounds pretty corroborative,” said Bond. “Somehow one can see the picture. One of those highly strung nervous chaps with the usual German chip on the shoulder. What does Val-lance think?”

“He’s not sure,” said M. “He’s mainly concerned with protecting his girl from the Press and seeing that her cover doesn’t get blown. All the papers are on to it, of course. It’ll be in the midday editions. And they’re all howling for a picture of the girl. Vallance is having one cooked up and got down to her that’ll look more or less like any girl, but just sufficiently like her. She’ll send it out this evening. Fortunately the reporters can’t get near the place. She’s refusing to talk and Vallance is praying that some friend or relation won’t blow the gaff. They’re holding the inquest today and Vallance is hoping that the case will be officially closed by this evening and that the papers will have to let it die for lack of material.”

“What about this practice shoot?’ asked Bond.

“They’re sticking to the schedule,” said M. “Noon on Friday. They’re using a dummy warhead and firing her vertically with only three-quarter tanks. They’re clearing about a hundred square miles of the North Sea from about Latitude 52 up. That’s north of a line joining The Hague and the Wash. Full details are going to be given out by the PM on Thursday night.”

M. stopped talking. He swivelled his chair round so that he could look out of the window. Bond heard a distant clock chime the four quarters. One o’clock. Was he going to miss his lunch again? If M. would stop ferreting about in the business of other Departments he could have a quick lunch and get round to Bentley’s. Bond shifted slightly in his chair.

M. turned back and faced him again across the desk.

“The people who are most worried about all this,” he said, “are the Ministry of Supply. Tallon was one of their best men. His reports had been completely negative all along. Then he suddenly rang up the Assistant Under-Secretary yesterday afternoon and said he thought something fishy was going on at the site and he asked to see the Minister personally at ten o’clock this morning. Wouldn’t say anything more on the telephone. And a few hours later he gets shot. Another funny coincidence, wasn’t it?”

“Very funny,” said Bond. “But why don’t they close down the site and have a wholesale inquiry? After all, this thing’s too big to take a chance on.”

“The cabinet met early this morning,” said M., “and the Prime Minister asked the obvious question. What evidence was there of any attempt, or even of any intention, to sabotage the Moonraker? The answer was none. There were only fears which had been brought to the surface in the last twenty-four hours by Tallon’s vague message and the double murder. Everyone agreed that unless there was a grain of evidence, which so far hasn’t turned up, both these incidents could be put down to the terrific nervous tension on the site. The way things are in the world at the moment it was decided that the sooner the Moonraker could give us an independent say in world affairs the better for us and,” M. shrugged his shoulders, “quite possibly for the world. And it was agreed that for a thousand reasons why the Moonraker should be fired the reasons against didn’t stand up. The Minister of Supply had to agree, but he knows as well as you or I that, whatever the facts, it would be a colossal victory for the Russians to sabotage the Moonraker on the eve of her practice shoot. If they did it well enough they might easily get the whole project shelved. There are fifty Germans working on the thing. Any one of them could have relatives still being held in Russia whose lives could be used as a lever.” M. paused. He looked up at the ceiling. Then his eyes came down and rested thoughtfully on Bond.

“The Minister asked me to go and see him after the Cabinet. He said that the least he could do was replace Tallon at once. The new man must be bilingual in German, a sabotage expert, and have had plenty of experience of our

Russian friends. MI5 have put up three candidates. They’re all on cases at the moment, but they could be extricated in a few hours. But then the Minister asked my opinion. I gave it. He talked to the Prime Minister and a lot of red tape got cut very quickly.”

Bond looked sharply, resentfully, into the grey, uncompromising eyes.

“So,” said M. flatly, “Sir Hugo Drax has been notified of your appointment and he expects you down at his headquarters in time for dinner this evening.”