Nena spoke to Criton, facing him and enunciating carefully, while Bond looked around at the heavy silk wall coverings, the antiques and the fresh flowers which seemed to have been gathered only a few hours ago.
‘Has Mr Bismaquer been here?’ Nena asked.
Criton shook his head.
‘Understand me, now, Criton,’ she continued. ‘You take the marsh hopper, and you put it out of sight. Okay?’
He nodded.
‘Then tell Tic we need food and drink. In the main bedroom.’
Criton nodded vigorously, grinning broadly.
‘Now, most important. You understand? Most important. Mr Bismaquer is coming. As soon as he is on the way – in a marsh hopper – you come wake us up. Right away. You watch all night. You do that, and I give you a good present. Okay?’
The deaf mute nodded as though trying to dislocate his neck.
‘He’ll do it.’ Nena locked eyes with Bond. ‘We’re safe, James. We can relax. Criton’ll warn us when Markus shows up; then we’ll be ready for him.’
‘You sure?’
‘Certain.’
She took hold of his hand, tugging gently, leading him up the stairs.
The master bedroom was huge, with carpet so thick you could roll up in it and go to sleep without recourse to sheets. The bed itself was typical of Bismaquer’s style: a huge, gilded four-poster, with a headboard carved and glinting with gold leaf— a large B displayed prominently among the scrollwork.
The bathroom had bath, shower, and jacuzzi. It was, Bond decided, only half the size of the bedroom.
They only heard Tic leave food in the bedroom, calling to them with a creole intonation. Nena and Bond were enjoying themselves far too much, naked in the jacuzzi.
Later, wrapped in towelling robes, they sat on the bed to eat a delicious crab and okra gumbo, which, Nena maintained, was reckoned among the locals, to be a great aphrodisiac.
Bond, who had felt near exhaustion on arrival, did not know whether to thank the gumbo, or Nena’s natural feminine powers. But they made love several times – with concentrated power, and increasing mutual delight – before switching the lights off and cradling each other into sleep.
At first, Bond thought he was dreaming; that the shot was simply part of some immediately-forgotten nightmare. His eyes snapped open, and he lay still for a second, listening in the dark.
The next moment, though, he knew it was the real thing. There were two more heavy reports. He reached out for Nena, but she was not there.
He switched the light on, grabbing for the towelling robe and the .45 as his feet touched the carpet.
The robe was there, but the big automatic – which he had so carefully left by the bed – had disappeared.
Once in the robe, he turned the light off again and felt his way to the door. The house still seemed to echo from the shots. Downstairs, he thought, moving knees bent, his bare feet silent on the carpet.
He stopped, to listen again, at the top of the staircase. He thought he heard sounds from behind a door adjacent to the big carved newel post at their stair foot. A thin sliver of light showed under the door. Nena, he thought, his heart thudding. Bismaquer had arrived and the deaf mute had given no warning. Either that, or she had tried to go it alone.
He moved more quickly down the stairs, pausing for a moment just outside the door, listening to the muffled sounds coming from the other side. Gradually the noises took form – a whimpering, pleading babble. Without waiting another second, Bond kicked the door open, just in time to see the last act of Bismaquer’s drama being played out.
It was a long room. Most of the space was taken up by a polished oak table, the chairs pushed neatly in around it. The far wall appeared to be made of glass. But it was the tableau close to this huge window that stopped Bond, as in a kind of paralysis, in the doorway.
It was a grotesque scene. Slumped against the wall lay the big pink-faced Markus Bismaquer, one shoulder and both his legs covered in blood where the three bullets had chewed their way into kneecaps and arm. The cherubic face was changed – a child in pain and terror.
Standing over him, stark naked, her one magnificent breast caught as though by a spotlight, was Nena. She held the Colt .45, pointing directly at Bismaquer’s head as he pleaded through his pain, begging her to stop. The bear, finally overcome and helpless.
She seemed not to see – or even notice – that Bond was there. In turn, he was so shaken by the sight that he stood, rooted, mesmerised, for too long.
‘I always knew your heart wasn’t in it, Markus.’ The glissando laugh had changed to a harsh crow, while the endearing French accent was now guttural and rough.
‘No, Markus. I might just have spared you; but you didn’t cover your tracks. The Britisher, Bond, gave it all away. When we had him set up – with the new personality well implanted in him – you crept in, from my bed no doubt, because he told me that he smelled my hair.
‘You went to him and filled his mouth full of wake-up pills, didn’t you? Another of your loves, Markus? Did you fall for him? Like you fell for that Leiter bitch? Anything that moves, eh? Luxor, me, Leiter, Bond. Well, there’s no reason to keep you any longer – husband.’
Bond actually jumped as she pulled the trigger, and Bismaquer’s head disintegrated like a burst blood-filled bladder, the gore splattering Nena’s naked body.
‘My God. You bitch.’
For a single beat in time, Bond thought he had not said it aloud. But Nena Bismaquer turned quickly, with the deadly eye of the Colt steady, and pointing directly at Bond’s chest.
Her face had changed, and in the clear light Bond could see that she appeared older. The hair was tousled, and the black fire now burned a hatred in her eyes. It was the eyes which brought the whole thing into perspective. No matter how he had tried to cover it, even with the use of contact lenses, Ernst Stavro Blofeld’s eyes had been black: black as the Prince of Darkness himself.
Nena smiled, lopsided, and in the smile revealed her paranoia.
‘Well, James Bond. At last. I’m sorry you had to watch this nasty business. I really was thinking of sparing him, until you thanked me for feeding you wake-up pills. Then I knew he had to die. It’s a pity. He was quite brilliant in his way. My organisation can always make room for chemists who have a streak of genius – like Markus Bismaquer. But his stomach wasn’t up to it, I’m afraid.’
She took a step towards Bond, then changed her mind.
‘In spite of everything – and I have to admit you have prowess in some areas – I don’t think we’ve really met. My name is Nena Blofeld.’ She laughed. ‘I might say, your name is James Bond and I claim my reward.’
‘His daughter?’ Bond’s voice was barely audible.
‘My reward,’ she continued. ‘I’ve had a price on your head, ready to be claimed for some time. Are you surprised? Surprised that I managed to fool your people and the Americans? We knew you would be called in – Mr James Bond, the expert on SPECTRE. Yes, from a distance I enticed you, James. And you fell for it.
‘Now, I can claim my reward myself. You killed my father, I think. He warned me, even as a child, about you.’
‘And your mother?’ Bond played for time.
She made a dismissive, retchy sound from the back of her throat. ‘I’m illegitimate, though I know who she was. A French whore, who lived with him for a couple of years. I did not, knowingly, meet her. I loved my father, Mr James Bond. He taught me all I know. He also willed the organisation to me – SPECTRE. That’s all you really have to be told. Markus has gone. Now it’s your turn.’
She raised the Colt just as Bond dived towards the side of the table, and at that same moment, the dusty, frail figure of Walter Luxor came hurtling through the door, shouting:
‘The place is surrounded, Blofeld. They’re here – police, everywhere!’
She fired, and Bond saw part of the table splinter about a foot from his head. Twisting his body, he grabbed at the legs of the nearest heavy chair, haulin
g it out as Walter Luxor made a lunge for him, throwing himself directly into the path of Nena Blofeld’s next shot.
The bullet gouged into the left side of Luxor’s chest, spinning him like a top against the wall. He seemed to be pinned there for a second, before sliding down, a collapsed skeleton, leaving a crimson trail behind him.
Bond heard Blofeld gasp, cursing, and in that moment when she was still off-balance, he summoned all his energy, heaving at the big chair with every ounce of strength, making a supreme effort to fling it, at Nena Blofeld.
The chair appeared to hang, in mid-air, as she tried to duck it. But the combination of need for survival, hatred for any member of the Blofeld family and some hidden well of strength, served Bond’s purpose well.
The bottom of the chair’s seat hit her full in the chest. The four legs neatly pinioned her arms and the full force of the impact hurled her back against the window.
There was the sickening noise of cracking glass, then a terrible screaming. Nena Blofeld was thrown out on to the hard earth, which sloped down to the dense reeds and the water of the bayou.
The screaming continued, and Bond stood, transfixed by what happened next. As Blofeld hit the ground, so a metal cage, protected by tight wire mesh, dropped from the darkness above. At the same time, the area immediately outside the broken window became alive. The cage, Bond could see, had a roof and three sides, being open at the front, and reaching down to the reeds.
As the cage descended, so the lights dimmed in the room, but it was still bright enough to give a reasonable view of the reptiles which came squirming in. At least two of them – though Bond had the distinct impression there were others near by – were huge, fat, lethal pythons, thirty feet or more in length.
As the creatures slid over the screaming and kicking body, Bond heard the chair crack like thin plywood. Then the screams stopped. He was conscious of other people coming into the room, of a back he recognised as his old friend Felix Leiter.
Leiter limped towards the window, black gloves covering both his own and the artificial hand. Bond saw the arms being raised and Leiter’s hands come together. He turned his eyes away after the third explosion, as Felix put a bullet into the brains of each python, and – in case she was crushed, but not yet quite dead – gave the coup de grâce to Nena Blofeld.
‘Come on, James.’ It was Cedar, by his side, who guided him out of the corpse-strewn room.
A few minutes later, in the hall of the bayou house, she told him, simply, what had happened to her on the mono-rail.
‘I couldn’t kill them all. You told me to kill anybody who tried to get in. There were at least a dozen: Maybe they were already on board when we left the ranch. I just got out fast. Sorry, James. I tried to catch up with you, give some kind of warning, but it was all over too quickly. I didn’t dare shout – they seemed to be everywhere. I couldn’t see. We must have missed each other by inches. The only thing I bumped into was a body.’
‘How . . . ?’ he began.
‘I walked. Straight out through the gate and into the night. By the time I finally made Amarillo, it was too late to do anything. There really is nothing between that depot and the city.
‘Then things opened up, and reports started to come in from Cheyenne Mountain. By that time, Daddy had arrived, and a lot of other people. They finally got a trace on Madame Bismaquer’s helicopter. That’s how they tracked you down here. I always told you she was no good.’
Bond merely shook his head. It had not yet quite sunk in.
Felix Leiter came into the hall. ‘Nice to see you again, James, old buddy.’ His grin still had that sense of fun and impetuosity that Bond had always warmed to, trusted and admired. ‘You do realise that my daughter’s in love with you, James.’ Another quick grin. ‘As her father, I hope you’re going to make an honest woman of her – or a dishonest one. Either one will do, just to keep her quiet.’
‘Daddy!’ said Cedar, in a shocked voice that fooled nobody.
22
TO JAMES BOND:
THE GIFT OF A DAUGHTER
Cedar Leiter and James Bond stood on the balcony of his room at the Maison de Ville, New Orleans, looking out at the view. Somewhere near at hand, below them, a pianist was trying to recreate Art Tatum playing ‘Aunt Hagar’s Blues’. Cedar and James were arguing.
‘But you’ve said it would be different if I wasn’t your old friend’s daughter, James. Can’t you forget about that?’
‘Difficult.’ Bond had turned monosyllabic, particularly since talking, long distance, to M, who had sounded exceptionally cheerful and told him to take a couple of weeks’ leave. ‘No, 007, make that a month. You really have deserved it this time. Very good show indeed.’
‘What do you mean, difficult?’ Cedar became petulant. ‘You have said it all, James. You’d take me to bed like a shot if . . .’
‘If it wasn’t for your father, yes. And there’s an end to it.’
‘It’s not incest!’
‘But it wouldn’t seem right.’ Bond knew very well that it would seem very right if it happened. But . . .
‘Look. I’ve got time to kill. So have you. At least let’s go off and have a vacation together. She held her hands up, palms facing outwards. ‘No strings, James. I promise, no strings.’
Cedar immediately put her hands behind her neck, crossing her fingers in the old childhood ritual which allowed you to lie.
Bond sighed. ‘Okay. Just to keep you quiet. But I warn you, Cedar, you try anything and heaven save me – I’m just about old enough to be your father anyway – I’ll warm that pretty little backside for you.’
‘Oh. Promises,’ Cedar giggled.
They stood in silence for a while, and she groped for his hand. ‘Isn’t it fantastic out there? That sky, all velvet, and the stars?’
They were not to know it, but at that very moment, a rocket blasted off from Russia’s Northern Cosmodrome, near Plesetsk, to the south of Archangel. A very few minutes later, a bleep showed on the centre projection in the Main Control Room of the NORAD centre, in Cheyenne Mountain.
Within seconds, the Space Wolves Command Post, just along the passageway from Main Control, was setting one of its laserarmed platforms in a similar orbit, to close on the unidentified new object.
The Space Wolf was held off, within range, for the next thirty minutes, until the Satellite Data System recognised the newly launched arrival as another Meteor weather satellite. Only then was the Space Wolf quietly withdrawn and placed back into its normal orbit.
But Cedar and James Bond knew nothing of this. They simply stood there, looking out at the stars, with Bond’s hand gradually gripping Cedar’s palm. He gave it a little squeeze.
‘Okay, daughter,’ he asked, ‘where do you want to go?’
‘Well . . .’ Cedar’s answer was cut short by the telephone.
‘Hi, James.’ Felix Leiter’s voice made Bond feel oddly guilty. ‘I’m in the bar, and there’s a package for you, old friend,’ Felix told him.
‘Down in a couple of minutes.’ Bond cradled the telephone. ‘Your father. With a horse whip I should think.’ He told Cedar to wait for him, then they would go out to dinner.
Felix was not in the bar, however, nor could he be found in any of the hotel’s public rooms. But the barman told Bond that a man with a limp had been in. There was a package, and a note, for Mr Bond at Reception.
Sure enough, a heavy package, beautifully wrapped, waited for him, together with a neatly typed envelope. Bond tore open the envelope. Inside there was another sealed envelope, and a note. Open the package first, it read. It’s from someone really important. Then try the envelope. Felix.
Bond took the package into the bar, ordered a vodka martini, lit one of his specially made H. Simmons cigarettes, and carefully unwrapped the parcel. Inside was a large box, similar to those made for expensive jewellery. This one carried the Presidential seal embossed on the lid.
Slowly Bond undid the clasp, and lifted the lid. Lying in a specia
lly-moulded bed of silk was a silver-plated Police Positive .38 revolver. Engraved along the barrel were the words To James Bond. For Special Services. There followed the signature, and title, of the President of the United States of America.
Bond closed the box, tearing open the other envelope. A single card, handwritten with great care. It read: To James Bond: The Gift of a Daughter – or whatever you want her to be.
It was signed, Felix Leiter, and, as Bond read it, he knew that the planned holiday with Cedar was going to be laughter, fun, and a purely platonic relationship right down the line.
Waiting for Bond upstairs, Cedar had other ideas, and they were both stubborn as mules.
In his cab heading for the airport, Felix Leiter chuckled to himself.
AFTERWORD
In 1941 Fleming accompanied Admiral Godfrey to the United States for the purpose of establishing relations with the American secret service organisations. In New York Fleming met Sir William Stephenson, ‘the quiet Canadian’, who became a lifelong friend. Stephenson allowed Fleming to take part in a clandestine operation against a Japanese cipher expert who had an office in Rockefeller Center. Fleming later embellished this story and used it in his first James Bond novel, Casino Royale (1953). Stephenson also introduced Fleming to General William Donovan, who had just been appointed Coordinator of Information, a post which eventually evolved into the chairmanship of the Office of Strategic Services and then of the Central Intelligence Agency. At Donovan’s request Fleming wrote a lengthy memorandum describing the structure and functions of a secret service organisation. This memorandum later became part of the charter of the OSS and, thus, of the CIA In appreciation Donovan presented Fleming with a .38 Police Positive Colt revolver inscribed ‘For Special Services’.
JOAN DELFATTORE,
University of Delaware (from a dictionary of literary biography)
Also by John Gardner:
Licence Renewed
Icebreaker
Role of Honour
Nobody Lives for Ever