Bond glanced up sharply, his eyes suddenly losing their humour and turning to ice in a way that almost frightened Q'ute. 'Someone tried to be clever a long time ago,' he said slowly. In the back of his mind, he remembered, quite clearly, all the circumstances which had led to the plastic surgery, that showed now only as a white blemish, after the Cyrillic letter Щ-standing for SH-had been carved into the back of his hand in an attempt by SMERSH to brand him as a spy. It was long ago, and very far away now; but clear as yesterday. He detected the break he had made in Q'ute's guard with his sharp cruelty. So long ago, he thought: the business with Le Chiffre at Royale-les-Eaux, and a woman called Vesper – about the same age as this girl sitting on the workbench, showing off her shapely knees and calves – lying dead from an overdose, her body under the sheets like a stone effigy in a tomb.
The coldness in Bond's mien faded. He smiled at Q'ute, again looking down at his hand. 'A small accident – carelessness on my part. Needed a bit of surgery, that's all.' Then he went back to removing the packing grease from the Browning. All thoughts of dallying with the Q Branch executive called Ann Reilly were gone. She was relatively young and still learning the ways of the secret world, in spite of her electronic efficiency, he decided.
As though to break the mood, she asked, in a small voice, 'What's it like to kill somebody? They say you've had to kill a lot of people during your time in the Service.'
'Then they shouldn't talk so much.' It was Bond's turn to snap. He was reassembling the gun now. 'The need-toknow system operates in the Service. You, of all people, should know better than to ask questions like that.'
'But I do need to know.' Calmer now, but showing a streak of stubbornness that Bond had detected in her eyes before this. 'After all, I deal with some of the important "gee-whizz" stuff. You must also know what that covers secret death: undetectable. People die in this business. I should know about the end product.'
Bond completed the reassembly, ran the mechanism back and forth a couple of times, then picked up one of the magazines containing seven Browning Long 9mm. rounds that would shatter a piece of five-inch pine board at twenty feet.
Looking at the slim magazine, he thought of its lethal purpose, and what each of the little jacketed pieces of metal within would do to a man or woman. Yes, he thought, Q'ute-Ann Reilly-had a right to know. 'Give me a hand;' he nodded towards a box on the workbench. 'Bring along a couple of spare magazines. We have to test this little toy on the range, then work's over for the night.'
She picked up the magazines and slid down from her perch as she repeated the question. 'How does it feel to kill a person?'
'While it's happening, you don't think much about it,' Bond answered flatly. 'It's a reflex. You do it and you don't hesitate. If you're wise, and want to go on living, you don't think about it afterwards either. I've known men who've had breakdowns – go for early retirement on half pension – for thinking about it afterwards. There's nothing to tell, my dear Q'u… Ann. I try not to remember. That way I remain detached from its reality.'
'And is that why you clean off your pistol in front of someone like me – stripping it as though it were a woman?' He did not reply to that, and she followed Bond quietly through the corridor that led to the range.
It took Bond nearly an hour, and six extra magazines, before he was completely happy with the Browning. When they finished on the range, he went back to the gunsmith's room, with Q'ute in his wake, and stripped the gun down for cleaning after firing. As he completed this last chore, Bond looked up at her. 'Well, you've seen all there is to see. Show's over. You can go home now.'
'You no longer require my services then?'
She was smiling. Bond had not expected that. 'Well,' he said cautiously. 'If you'd care for dinner…' 'I'd love it,' she grinned. Bond took her in the Saab. They went into Kensington, to the Trattoo in Abingdon Road, where Carlo was pleased to see his old customer. Bond had not been there for some time and was treated with great respect, ordering for the pair of them-a simple meal: the z.uppa di verdura followed by fegato Bacchus, washed down with a light, young, Bardolino (a '79, for Bardolino should always be drunk young and cool, even though it is red, rather as the French imbibe their rose wines young, Bond explained). Afterwards, Carlo made them plain crepes with lemon and sugar, and they had coffee up in the bar, where Alan Clare was at the small piano.
Ann Reilly was enchanted, saying that she could sit and listen to the liquid ease of Clare's playing for ever. But the restaurant soon started to fill up. A couple of actors came in, a well-known movie director with crinkled grey hair, and a famous zany comedian. For Ann, Alan played one last piece – her request, the sentimental oldie from Casablanca: 'As Time Goes By'.
Bond headed the Saab back towards Chelsea, at Ann Reilly's bidding. Between giving him directions, she laughed a lot, and said she had not enjoyed an evening like this for a long time. Finally they pulled up in front of the Georgian terraced house where Q'ute said she had the whole of the second floor as her apartment.
'Like to come in and see my gadgets?' she asked. Bond could not see the smile in the darkness of the car, but knew it was there.
'Well, that's different,' he chuckled. 'I still stick to the etchings.'
She had the passenger door open. 'Oh, but I have gadgets,' she laughed again. 'I'm a senior executive of Q Branch, remember. I like to take my work home with me.'
Bond locked the doors, followed her up the steps and into the small elevator which had been installed during what estate agents call 'extensive modernisation'.
From the small entrance hall of Q'ute's apartment Bond could see the kitchen and bathroom. She opened the main door and they passed into the remainder of the apartment – one huge room – the walls hung with two large matching gilt-framed mirrors, a genuine Hockney and an equally genuine Bratby, of a well-known composer whose musicals had been at their peak fifteen to twenty years ago. The furnishings were mainly late 1960s Biba, and the lighting was to match – Swedish in design, and mounted on battens angled into the corners of the room.
'Ah, period décor,' said Bond with a grin.
Ann Reilly smiled back. 'All is not as it seems,' she giggled, and for a moment Bond wondered if she was not used to drinking: perhaps the wine had gone to her head. Then he saw her hand move to a small console of buttons by the light switches. Her fingers stabbed at the buttons, and in the next few seconds Bond could only think of transformation scenes at childhood pantomimes.
The lights dimmed and the room became bathed in a soft red glow which came from the skirting boards. The large, circular, smoked glass table which formed a focal point at the centre of the room seemed to sink into the carpet, and from it there came the sound of splashing water as it gleamed with light to become a small pond with a fountain playing at its centre. The Hockney, Bratby, and both of the mirrors appeared to cloud over, then clear, changed into paintings of a nature that almost shocked Bond by their explicitness.
He sniffed the air: a musky scent had risen around him, while the sound of piano music gently rose in volume – a slow, sensual blues solo, so close and natural that Bond peered about him, thinking the girl was actually sitting at an instrument somewhere. The scent and music began to claw at his senses. Then he took a step back, his eyes moving to the wall on his right. The wall had started to open up, and, from behind it, a large, high, waterbed slid soundlessly into the room – above it a mirrored canopy hanging from crimson silk ropes.
Ann Reilly had disappeared. For a second, Bond was disorientated, his back to the wall, head and eyes moving over the extraordinary sight. Then he saw her, behind the fountain, a small light, dim but growing to illuminate her as she stood naked but for a thin, translucent nightdress; her hair undone and falling to her waist – hair and the thin material moving and blowing as though caught in a silent zephyr.
Then, as suddenly as it all happened, the room started to change again. The lighting returned to normal, the table rose from the fountain, the Hockney, Bratby, and m
irrors were there once more, and Q'ute slowly faded from view. Only the bed stayed in place.
There was a chuckle from behind him, and Bond turned to find Q'ute, still in her brown velvet, and with her hair smooth and pleated, as she leaned against the wall laughing. 'You like it?' she asked.
Bond frowned. 'But…?'
'Oh come on, James. The transformation's easy: micro and electronics; son et lumière. I built it all myself.' 'But you…?' 'Yes,' she frowned, 'that's the most expensive bit, but I put most of that together as well; and the model is me. Hologram. Very effective, yes? Complete 3D. Come on, I'll show you the gubbins…'
She was about to move away when Bond caught hold of her, pulled her close and into a wild kiss. She slid her hands to his shoulders, gently pushing him away. 'Let's see.' She cocked an eyebrow at him. Т thought you'd have got the idea. You said the place was period décor- 1960s. All I've done – and I've spent many happy hours getting it right is add in a 1960s' fantasy: music, lights, the waterbed, scent, and an available bird with very few clothes on. I thought you of all people, James Bond, would have got the message. Fantasies should change with the times. Surely we're all more realistic these days. Particularly about relationships. The word is, I think, maturity.'
Yes, thought Bond, Q'ute was a good name for Ann Reilly, as she scurried around showing off the electronics of her fantasy room. 'It might be an illusion', he said, 'but it still has a lethal effect.'
She turned towards him, 'Well, James, the bed's still there. It usually is. Have some coffee and let's get to know one another.'
In his own flat the next morning, Bond was awake before six-thirty. The biter bit, he thought, with a wry smile. If ever a man's bluff had been called, it was by the ingenious Q'ute. In good humour he exercised, took a hot bath, followed by a cold shower; shaved, dressed and was in his dining room when the faithful May came in with his copy of The Times and his normal breakfast – the favourite meal: two large cups of black coffee, from De Bry, without sugar; a single 'perfectly boiled' brown egg (Bond still affected to dislike anything but brown eggs, and kept his opinion regarding three and one-third minutes constituting the perfect boiling time); then two slices of wholewheat toast with Jersey butter and Tiptree 'Little Scarlet' strawberry jam, Cooper's Vintage Oxford Marmalade or Norwegian heather honey.
Governments could come and go; crises could erupt; inflation may spiral, but-when in London – Bond's breakfast routine rarely changed. In this he was the worst thing a man in his profession could be: a man of habit, who enjoyed the day starting in one particular manner, eating from the dark blue egg cup with a gold ring around the top, which matched the rest of his Minton china, and happy to see the Queen Anne silver coffee pot and accessories on his table. Faddish as this quirk certainly was, Bond would have been outraged if anyone told him it smacked of snobbery. For James Bond, snobbery was for others, in all walks of life. A man has a right to certain pleasurable idiosyncrasies – more than a right, if they settled his mind and stomach for the day ahead.
Following the Q'ute incident, Bond hardly took any time off during the preparation for what he now thought of as an assignation with Anton Murik on Gold Cup day.
On most evenings lately he had gone straight back to his flat and a book which he kept between his copies of Scarne's Complete Guide to Gambling and an 1895 edition of the classic Sharps and Flats – A complete revelation of the secrets of cheating at games of chance and skill by John Nevil Maskelyne. The book he read avidly each night had been published privately around the turn of the century. Bond had come across it in Paris several years before, and had it rebound in board and calf by a printer often employed by the Service. It was written by a man using the pseudonym Cutpurse and titled The Skills, Arts and Secrets of the Dip. It was, in fact, a comprehensive treatise on the ancient arts of the pickpocket and lightfingered body-thief.
Using furniture, old coats -even a standard lamp – Bond practised various moves in which he was already well skilled. His discussions with M, as to how he should introduce himself to the Laird of Murcaldy and his entourage, had formulated a plan that called for the cleverest possible use of some of the tricks described by Cutpurse. Bond knew that to practise some of these dodges, it was necessary to keep in constant trim – like a card sharp, or even a practitioner of the harmless, entertaining, business of legerdemain. He therefore began anew, re-learning the bump, the buzz, the two-fingered lift, the palm-dip (usually used on breast pockets), the jog-in which a small billfold is literally jogged from a man's hip pocket-or the thumb-hitch.
A pickpocket seldom works alone. Gangs of from three to ten are the normal rule, so Bond's own plan was to be made doubly difficult: first he had to do the thing by himself; second, the normal picking of pockets did not apply. He was slowly working up his skill to the most difficult move in the book – the necklace flimp: flimp being a word that went back to the early nineteenth century, when flimping referred, normally, to the removal of a person's fob watch. Towards the end of the period Bond was spending several hours a night perfecting the moves of the necklace flimp. All he could hope for was that M's information, given to him during those long hours of briefing under the Cooper painting of Admiral Jervis's victory, would prove accurate.
Now, a signpost read ' Ascot 4 miles ', and Bond joined a queue of Bentleys, Rolls-Royces, Daimlers and the like, all heading towards the race course. He sat calmly at the wheel; his Browning in its holster, locked away in the glove compartment; Q'ute's personalised luggage in the boot of the car, and himself in shirtsleeves, the grey morning coat neatly folded on the rear seat, with the matching topper beside it. Before leaving, Bond had reflected that he would not have put it past Q'ute to arrange some kind of device inside a top hat. She had been very affable, promising any assistance in the field – 'Just let me know, and I'll be out with whatever you need, 007,' she had said with only the trace of a wink.
Bond allowed her a small twitch of the eyebrow.
Now he looked like any other man out to cut a dash in the Royal Enclosure. In fact his mind was focused on one thing only – Dr Anton Murik, Laird of Murcaldy, and his association with the terrorist, Franco.
The careful, if quickly planned, run-up to the assignment was over. James Bond was on his own, and would only call up help if the situation demanded it.
As he approached the race course, Bond felt slightly elated, though a small twist in his guts told him the scent of danger, maybe even disaster, was in the air.
6 PEARLS BEFORE SWINE
THERE WAS ONLY ONE part of any race course that James Bond really enjoyed – the down-market public area. Alongside the track itself life was colourful: the characters always appearing more alive and real – the day-trip couples out for a quick flutter; tipsters with their sharp patter, and the ebullient, on-course bookies, each with his lookout man watching a partner; the tick-tack sign language being passed across the heads of the punters, relaying changes in the betting odds. Here there was laughter, enjoyment and the buzz of pleasure.
For the first couple of races that day, Bond – immaculate in morning suit and topper – strolled in the public crowd, as though reluctant to take his rightful place in the Royal Enclosure, the pass for which (provided by M) was pinned to the lapel of his morning coat.
He even stayed down near the rails to watch the arrival of Her Majesty, Prince Philip and the Queen Mother-stirred, as ever, by the inspiring sight of tradition as the members of the Royal Family were conveyed down the course in their open carriages: a blaze of colour, with liveried coachmen and postillions – like a ceremony from another age.
His first action, on arrival, had been to check the position of Anton Murik's box in the Grand- or Tattersalls-Stand (another fact gleaned from one of M's expert sources). The Murik box was third along from the left on the second tier.
Leaning against the rails, Bond scanned the tiered boxes with binoculars provided by Q Branch-field glasses of a particular powerful nature, with Zeiss lenses, made especially for the
Service by Bausch & Lomb. The Murik box was empty, but there were signs that it would soon be inhabited. Bond would have to keep his eye on the paddock prior to the Gold Cup; but, before that event, there was an overwhelming desire to have a wager on his target's horse. Dr Anton Murik's entry did not stand much chance. That was patently obvious from the odds being offered.
For the Gold Cup, the Queen's horse was favourite, with Lester Piggott up; and odds at only five-to-four on. Other contenders were very well-tried four-year-olds, most of them with exceptional records. In particular, Francis' Folly, Desmond's Delight and Soft Centre were being heavily tipped. The other ten runners seemed to be there merely for the ride; and the Laird of Murcaldy's China Blue – by Blue Light out of Geisha Girl – appeared to have little opportunity of coming anywhere near the leaders. Bond's race card showed that in his last three outings, the horse had achieved only one placing, the card reading 0-3-0.
The harsh facts were borne out by the betting odds, which stood at twenty-five-to-one. Bond gave a sardonic smile, knowing that M would be furious when he put in his expenses. If you're going to plunge rashly with the firm's money, he thought, do it with a little style. With this in his head, Bond approached a bookmaker whose board showed him to be Honest Tone Snare, and placed a bet of one hundred and ten pounds to win on China Blue. One hundred and ten pounds may be a negligible sum, but, to the Service accountants, even five pounds was a matter of arguable moment.
'You got money to burn, Guv?' Honest Tone gave Bond a toothy grin.
'One hundred and ten to win,' Bond repeated placidly.