The Israel Bond Omnibus (70 page)
Read The Israel Bond Omnibus Online
Authors: Sol Weinstein
“Who was this fisherman?”
“A man called Nikko Tee-Yin.”
8 A Crawler, a Baller
Dinner, held out of doors and served by taciturn Japanese, was a subdued affair despite the excellence of the professor’s cuisine. Bond had never tasted anything as succulent as the Da Nang pongi stake shoots doused in the Green Giant’s delicately seasoned butter sauce and Camembert Kampfert cheese dip.
Sanka was unaffable, no doubt brooding over the “accident” that had cost him a first-rate
tantei
,
[80]
Bond thought. Who had been the convenient “air current”? Feldspar? Or one of his many aides, including some Scandinavians in long-sleeved black sweaters not given to much more than some noncommittal small talk and a hawk-faced man who spoke English in a thick Slavic accent. He’d been introduced by Feldspar as Dr. Yaynu, a Bulgarian paleontologist who’d quit his homeland before the Communist takeover.
Bond, resplendent in Takashima cultured-pearl pajamas and Alfie bedsocks which had cost him thirty quid and six buskers, quaffed his fifth flagon of Beefeater Gin and coleslaw. “Where, professor, is the charming Mrs. Feldspar? I’ve not seen her since we arrived,” queried Bond, and he got a jealous stare from Kopy that would have snuffed out a wildcat oil fire. She dashed her
patie de marco
lungfish soufflé into his face and exited in tears.
“Magma has asked to be excused, Mr. Bond. She finds these humid Kyushu nights too taxing. Indeed, all of Japan bores her, I fear. Perhaps she will prove more companionable on the morrow. I myself have come to adore this land. Here is a sense of order and harmony I find lacking in decadent Europe and its preoccupation with television, go-go girls,
le hot dog
and the scandalous behavior of the jet set. I have searched my heart for a way to repay Japan for the serenity she has brought me and I think I have found it.”
“But certainly the discovery of the scrolls is repayment enough.”
“That is a contribution to the world, Mr. Bond, and, incidentally, tomorrow I shall reveal a portion of the scrolls’ contents at an international press conference to which you are cordially invited. Working in the cave by dim kerosene lamplight, I was only able to jot down a few paragraphs, which I have transcribed into English. My gift to Japan is of a more personal nature. At my own expense I shall rebuild the Great Herrosukka Buddha, whose ruins lie a few hundred yards from the main cave.”
Bond sensed the fervor in Feldspar, a man with a mission—one of construction, not destruction, as Bond’s was—and for a moment the Israeli felt ashamed at his years in the seamy spy business. The Dane seemed a likable, openhearted chap and Bond hoped he was an innocent party in this affair.
“The Great Herrosukka Buddha, Mr. Bond, was literally the idol of millions of Kyushu Japanese. On holy days throngs made their way up these cliffs, some on foot, the elderly on donkeys, to place garlands of onion rings at its feet and burn joss sticks of Wrigley’s seaweed gum. Then a year ago a typhoon of extraordinary magnitude struck, flattening thousands of homes, killing hundreds of thousands of peasants, destroying the sisal and jute crops, which are the staple diet of Kyushu farmers. It climaxed its assault by hurling the Buddha into the Pacific, leaving only the tattered base. The Norwegians whom you met this evening are construction experts and, indeed, one of them, Ibsen, holds the rank of Master Builder. Working from my sketch of the Buddha, they will reconstruct it in a matter of days until it again towers one hundred feet into the sky of Japan. Then will my debt be repaid. And now I shall retire to my tent to burn the midnight oil over my scroll translations. Goodnight, Mr. Bond.”
Feldspar bowed and stumbled off on the giraffe legs.
Poor bastard,
Bond thought.
It’s as though he were on stilts.
Stilts!
By thunder, he’d been a maudlin fool.
There was a quick way to find out. His long, tapering fingers yanked the Bowie-Handicapper throwing knife from his right bedsock and zipped it at the departing scientist. Feldspar yelped as the tip bit into his left calf, tripped and fell over a hibachi stove, howling again as a sleeve of his Ruark bush jacket caught fire.
Bond snatched the bowl of cheese dip and used it to quench the flames. “Professor, a thousand pardons. I had to do it. I thought somehow you were Dr. Ernst Holzknicht.”
“Holzknicht!” The Dane’s face whitened in loathing.
“Holzknicht!” Clamping his steam shovel of a hand against his leg, he hopped into his tent and closed the flap.
That’s torn it,
Bond thought
. I’ve just knifed my host on a ridiculous, billion-to-one-shot. The man must think I’m a mindless butcher. Yet how horrified he was when I dropped the magic name. Could be my nemesis has a hold on him. You’re getting into deep waters, my friend.
On the way to his tent, some five yards from Kopy’s, he heard her wind-borne sobs. Hell, another jealous broad. Just because you balled ’em and promised undying love, they thought they owned you. Let her stew a bit.
His lodging was no Imperial Hotel suite, that was certain. A cot, a blanket, a fifty-yen reproduction of the
Mona Lisa
tacked over his pillow. A sardonic smile curved his sensual mouth. Didn’t they think he knew that under the
Mona
Lisa’s
moustache was an enigmatic smile, not an O-shaped expression? Who did they think they were fooling with, some M.I. 6 idiot? Sure enough, inside the O was the little electronic snooper, a Reddy Kilowatt bug with a Dr. Seuss-Ikon frequency range of six long-ton hectares, a standard piece of TUSH equipment. Who was the patient listener on the other end?
He ground it to jonesereens under his contemptuous heel, stripped to his E. J. Korvette parsely-patterned wallaby-skin skivvies and stretched out on the cot. From his bag he took a gallon of Suntory, the excellent Japanese Scotch, poured it into a water bucket, mixed in shredded ginger, soy sauce and a pinch of Mother Margolies’ Activated Old World
lekvar
and guzzled it down. He blew out the candle, pulled up the blanket and in seconds was dreaming he was locked in a backstage room at the Copacabana, the entire chorus line begging for his sexual favors.
Well, the show must go on,
he jested in his sleep.
Something woke him.
Something on his ankle.
Israel Bond froze. Tendrils were moving up his right leg, parting the fine, grade A-1 hairs covering the blemish-free epidermis he toned each day with brisk Dannon yogurt rubs.
Don’t move a furge of a fifkin, Oy Oy Seven,
his brain told him. It may be the lethal Kyushu tarantula! Or the golden Ibusuki scorpion, whose sting... Don’t move a muscle! The tendrils had passed the knees he’d studiously had recapped every twenty thousand miles and were gliding toward his inner thigh, higher and higher. Gottenu! What if it was headed... there? And it was, dammit, it was! He couldn’t let it vitiate his manhood; he couldn’t....
His right hand slammed down, mashed something and there was a splintering noise and a stifled scream.
“My hand, you’ve broken my hand....”
He fished an Ohio blue-tipped match from his Takashimas and relit the candle.
His nocturnal visitor was a naked woman!
9 Kopy Enraged, Kopy Engaged
Magma Feldspar, the tigerish blonde whose sex-starved face had hungered for him from the newspaper clipping, writhed like a ferret in the steel trap of his hand. “I’ve been watching you all day through binoculars,” she whispered. “I didn’t dare greet you at dinner because I think I’d have torn the pj’s off your lithe, muscular body then and there. For the love of Eros or any other banned magazine, take me, take me, take me!”
He released her hand. “Let’s not be puerile about it, baby. A situation like this calls for a little savoir faire.” On his compact Webcor he placed a spool of tasteful recordings he often used to make love by. His gray eyes sparkled a teasing challenge. “What’ll it be?
The Friggin Forkful? The Muggers and the Fuggers? Swing Along with Mitch? George Beverly Shea Sings for Fundamentalist Lovers? Hava Negila?
”
“If a
negila
is what I think it is, yes, I’ll hava
negila!
And you, you hava piece of Danish now!”
He sprinkled a pint jar of Nescafé on her glistening flesh (it was unthinkable to have Danish without coffee) and released the unbearable tension in her, saving the red-corpuscle-melting Siberian Steppe backflip for the joint moment of cataclysmic unification.
Sarah’s face floated above him, her sloe eyes two leaky faucets.
Oh, Iz, Iz! Again?
Forgive me, angel, but I’m a man, etc.
Thwick! Thwack!
Two flashes of pain flayed his back and he whirled to find Kopy wielding a belt. “You-you rotten...” She could not finish her recriminations, choked on the tears streaming into her mouth and ran blindly into the night.
Magma lit a Raleigh. “You seem to be in demand, my Sinai stud. I don’t care as long as I get my share.”
Bond poured her fifteen fingers of Suntory and watched her toss it down like a dockhand. Fun time was over. Now the snap quiz. “How did you ever tie the knot with our nonswinging seven-footer? You don’t look like the ivory-tower type, Mag. The basement is more your speed.”
Magma threw back her hustler’s head and cackled. “You’ve got me pegged, Bond. Iggie bores the hell out of me. I met him in Copenhagen a few months ago when I was a bar girl at the Club Elsinore. He took a shine to me, came in night after night, spent
mucho dinero
. Then he popped the question and I said to myself, ‘Magma, you’re not getting any younger,’ so I accepted. The question was the last thing he’s ever popped.”
Bond ran his hand over her quivering navel. “Tough situation for a gal with your appetite.”
“You said it, handsome. Hell, when I realized he wasn’t going to do anything more than kiss me good night on the cheek and mess with his books and formulae, I decided I’d have to catch a little extracurricular jazz now and then. But none of ’em have been anything like tonight. Why all the questions? You some kind of secret agent?”
“Has he ever mentioned the name Ernst Holzknicht?”
Magma sat up, her mouth in a hard line. “I’ve answered all I’m going to. Sleep tight, tiger.”
Bond bent her head with a slap. “And you’ve had your last tankful, Mag, unless...”
“All right, all right.” She gingerly touched her swelling cheek. “Once Iggie got a long-distance call. We were in West Berlin at the time. He turned pale, started to shake. I heard him say, ‘Ernst, for God’s sake don’t hurt the boy. I’ll comply.’ Shortly thereafter, Iggie said we were coming to Japan. That’s all I know; I swear it.”
“Toodle-oo, Magma. We’ll have some more hanky-panky in your tanky real soon.” He kicked her out, lit a Raleigh and reviewed the tidbits she’d contributed. The pieces of the puzzle were coming together. Holzknicht did have a hold on the giant—“the boy,” whoever he was. He’d have to win the Dane’s confidence and perhaps do Feldspar a good turn before this caper was ended.
Deep racking sobs rent the air. Kopy. He’d treated her pretty rough, he supposed. Time to make up. He crept into her tent and embraced the puffy-eyed researcher.
“Oh, Iz, how could you hurt me so?”
Bond stroked the ebony tresses. “It was strictly in the line of duty,
maideleh
. Remember what you said about a secret agent facing death every second? Well, what you just saw was a perfect illustration. I could have died of ecstasy from what that broad was doing to me.”
Her lips were two raspberry floats brushing his neck. “Darling, you don’t know how difficult it is for a nice Jewish girl. We’d all like to marry our own kind of fellas, but you Jewish boys treat us so mean. You see a Jewish girl and right away you run a mental Dun and Bradstreet on her. Is she pretty? Accomplished? Rich? Then along comes a heavy-breathing
shikseh
like that Magma and all of a sudden it’s
love
with no questions asked.”
“Are
you rich?” He hoped the query sounded lighthearted.
“Heavens, yes. An Alta Zeydah Kapplan won’t touch a job under one hundred thou’ per. And Daddy’s loaded. Made a pile pushing a line of low-cholesterol, high-protein foods—organic swamp cabbage, newt burgers, tumbleweed tea. Surely you’ve heard of him—‘Unsaturated’ Katz?”
“You bet,” and his hand was sliding the nearly tenth-of-a-carat garnet engagement ring onto her third finger left hand. “You and I are for keeps, Kopy Katz. Hit Xerox for a raise. Little squeakers need tons of white booties and nappies.”
Deliriously happy, she fell into his bronzed arms. “Oh, Iz! Iz!” Then slyly, “Do you think you can instigate another state of tumescence?”
Bond grinned. “I guess it can be arranged, luv.” To himself:
Gottenu!
In the near future I damn well better get to the first sperm bank I can find, and make a withdrawal!