James Bond and Moonraker (13 page)

Bond watched the Ferrari streaking up behind him and called out fresh instructions to the driver. The Rolls bounded across the tram lines and then accelerated up the road which the tram had descended. The Ferrari skidded to a halt as the tram momentarily blocked its path, and then roared off in pursuit.

Hanging on to the side of the tram, the middle-aged unshaven man with the ragged trousers ending just below the knees watched the Ferrari disappear and wondered why the impeccably dressed foreigner wearing a light-weight tropical suit had leapt from a Rolls-Royce to take up a position beside him. Bond smiled sociably, but said nothing.

At first glance Number 1784 did not look any different to the other apartment blocks facing Copacabana Beach. It was slightly taller, perhaps, and the architecture more discreet than that of the newer hotels, but there was nothing to mark it out as one of the most valuable pieces of real estate in the world. Bond climbed the steps past the carefully tended pots of shrubs and inserted the thin platinuin key he had been given into the signed slot at the entrance. The glass doors slid open obediently and he walked into the air-conditioned coolness of the hall. His eyes took a few seconds to get used to the restrained half-light, and it was in this brief period that a swarthy besuited figure materialized beside him.

‘Mr Bond? We have been expecting you.’ He looked beyond Bond to the glass doors. ‘Your luggage?’

‘Coming.’ Bond smiled his agreeable smile. ‘It was so pleasant I thought I’d walk.’

‘Of course.’ It was clearly policy not to argue with clients. ‘My name is Alvarez. Should there be anything you wish while you are staying with us — anything at all — it will be my pleasure to procure it for you.’

‘Thank you’ was almost too short a reply with which to greet such munificence, but Bond uttered it, whereupon he was conducted to an elevator the size of a miniature ballroom. No sooner had the door closed than it seemed to open again, and Senhor Alvarez announced that they were on the twenty-first and top floor of the building. He led the way across a mahogany floor polished to the sheen of turtle shell and respectfully withdrew Bond’s key from his fingers.

‘The locks have been reprogrammed to receive your personal key, Mr Bond.’

Bond nodded and watched as the sliver of platinum was inserted in one of a pair of doors that could have received a grand piano without the jambs coming within a couple of feet of scratching the varnish. With an impresario’s panache, Alvarez flung open the door and extended a hand. The penthouse seemed to stop just short of the African coast.

‘The President’s suite!’

Bond looked about him. ‘You must have a lot of presidents.’

The remark seemed to nonplus Alvarez, who hesitated uneasily.

Bond reclaimed his key and guided the startled manager back towards the door. ‘Don’t bother to show me round. If I get lost I’ll call a cab.’ He closed the door with a polite smile.

Bond’s first estimate of the size of the suite had been exaggerated, but the living room was still the size of a hotel lounge. Furnished in the same way as well. Pillars, arches, scattered groups of low furniture and tall potted plants brushing against a roof that showed more glass than plaster.

It was an impersonal room. Opulent certainly, but not a place to curl up with a good book. The sheets of coloured glass that formed one long wall had been pulled back to give the effect of a Mondrian painting. Bond walked through to. the terrace. beyond. The view was impressive but not quite in the way that he had anticipated. Certainly the near-Olympic sized swimming pool was a revelation and the view of Rio from the Sugar Loaf to Ipanema a tourist brochure writer’s dream. What was unexpected was that the pool had an occupant. She was swimming with a lazy crawl, her slim honey-brown body carving a shallow furroW through the crystal water. It was the stroke of someone who swam a lot, economical, unhurried, the feet drumming up a small wake of froth. The back was bare and there was no white line across the tan. A compressed triangle of faded blue half covered_ the neat buttocks. Bond watched the girl’s shoulder muscles ripple as she pulled herself out of the water and turned to face him. She sat on the edge of the pool and shook out her wet hair, seemingly impervious to the fact that her breasts were uncovered. Taking her time, she stretched out a hand and hooked on a bikini top as Bond had seen men slip into a shoulder holster. She fastened the bikini under her breasts and stood up. Bond started to walk round the pool. The girl surveyed him haughtily. He might have been the postman arriving with a buff envelope.

‘Do you come with the apartment?’

The girl finished patting her face with a large white towel and looked at Bond through deep brown eyes. ‘It depends who’s renting it.’ She laid the towel on a reclining seat and moved to a drinks trolley that was positioned beneath a wide sun umbrella. The canvas flapped in the breeze. ‘Vodka martini, isn’t it?’

‘With very little martini, thank you.’ Bond watched his drink being made and approved of the eyelash thickness of lemon peel that scythed its way to the bottom of the chilled glass. ‘You drive well.’

The girl’s face suddenly lit up in a smile. ‘Not usually as fast. My old instructor at Hendon would have burst a blood vessel. I’m sorry I missed you at the airport.’ The girl handed him his drink. ‘By the way, my name is Manuela. I work for Station VH. We’ve been asked to assist you.’

Bond smiled. ‘M thinks of everything.’ Apparently including girls who were taught to drive at the police driving school at Hendon.

Manuela nodded towards the penthouse. ‘Do you think you’re going to be comfortable?’

‘I don’t suffer from vertigo or agoraphobia, so I should be all right.’ He sipped his drink. ‘You mix a very good martini.’

‘Thank you.’ She looked about her. ‘Don’t you think that this must be some of the most palatial accommodation the service has to offer anywhere in the world?’

‘I’ve slept in beds that were less comfortable than the carpet,’ said Bond. ‘How did we get our hands on it? I feel I ought to write to my M.P. about squandering public funds.’

‘You’ve no need to bother. It used to belong to a German war criminal. He left it to us in his will just before he died.’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Bond, ‘I think I remember reading something about it. He fell to his death, didn’t he?’

‘From this balcony actually,’ said Manuela. She stretched out a hand. ‘Can I refill your glass?’

Bond held up a restraining hand. ‘No thanks. Something about this place preaches temperance. Tell me, Manuela, do the initials C and W mean anything to you?’

Manuela thought for a moment and nodded. ‘If you’re referring to Rio, most certainly. There is a firm here called Carlos and Wilmsberg. They are very big in the import-export business. They are a subsidiary of the Drax Corporation, I think.’

‘Where are they based?’

‘They have a big warehouse and offices in Carioca Avenue.’

Bond’s eyes. narrowed. ‘Good. I want to pay them a discreet visit tonight.’

Manuela shook her head and smiled. ‘I think you may find that a little difficult.’

Bond’s jaw set in a determined line. ‘Nevertheless, I want to do it.’

Manuela held his glance for a moment and then turned away to pick up an aerosol can of suntan lotion. ‘Very well. We can try.’ She squirted some cream against her calf and leant forward to start massaging it. Bond transferred his gaze to his watch with difficulty. It was just after three o’clock. His hand stretched out and started to massage just above Manuela’s fingers. She raised her head to look into his eyes and her lower lip hung forward temptingly. The merest tremor ran through it as Bond’s fingertips touched hers. Bond’s mouth parted slowly. ‘Tell me one thing, Manuela — how do you kill five hours in Rio if you don’t samba?’ Her lips had formed half a smile when Bond’s hungry mouth obliterated it.

By eight o’clock the noise on Carioca Avenue could have been used to disguise the Salerno landings. Fireworks, samba bands, cheering crowds, celebrating groups, happy individuals. All the sounds of a Latin people enjoying carnival as if the other 364 days of the year were expendable inches on a slowly burning fuse wire. Bond looked up at the packed grandstands and the mile-long procession of floats and extravagantly dressed samba schools receding into the neon distance and marvelled at the irrepressible energy that was erupting all about him. The samba rhythm was like a never-ending line of breakers pounding at his eardrums. The perfervid throbbing was an extension of his pulse. Nobody seemed to be capable of standing still. Everywhere was bobbing, weaving, lifting, jumping, bumping movement. With hardly a drop of liquor in his body, Bond could imagine that he was drunk on colour and sound. Carmen Miranda danced by with Charlie Chaplin, and a black girl, glistening naked beneath a wind of fisherman’s netting, draped an inviting arm across his chest. Almost instantly she had disappeared behind a wall of waddling egg-shaped clowns who in turn gave way to coffee-coloured girls in silver lamé sheaths and tight-fitting bonnets whirling like dervishes.

Bond turned to make sure that Manuela had not been swept away by the crowd. Her own costume plunged almost to the waist at the front, and lower at the back. She had big puffed sleeves on her arms and a petticoat effect of overlapping polka-dotted skirts that sprang out from the clinging garment at knee level. Large circular ear rings dangled to her shoulders and her black hair curled back from a semicircle of beaten gold. Dressed in his black dinner jacket, Bond felt that he was hardly exhibiting the abandon that the occasion demanded. Manuela fought her way to his side. ‘That’s the warehouse on the next corner.’

Bond looked over the heads of the milling crowd and smiled ruefully. ‘And not a soul about. Next time I’ll pay more attention to what you say.’

Manuela looked up at him reproachfully. ‘You’re too impetuous, James. We could easily have waited until tomorrow.’

Bond appeared not to hear her. His face set quickly into a hard, determined mask as he dropped his shoulder into the mob of revellers and bore remorselessly forward. Manuela shrugged and followed him. She could no more understand this man than she could the reason she had so suddenly given herself to him. It was not the way she normally behaved. Still, as her still quivering body could easily bear witness, this was no ordinary man.

Twenty yards away in the main stream of the carnival procession, the movement of Bond and his companion attracted interested eyes. They rolled inquisitively from the holes in the face mask of a grotesque carnival figure towering several feet above the other revellers. Half clown, half giant robot, the figure seemed to suffer from a crisis of identity. Or at least from a lack of preparation in comparison with the other carnival figures, whose lustre reflected nearly a year’s work. As Bond and Manuela entered a narrow alley, so the figure in its turn veered to the left and started to move clumsily against the tide, in pursuit.

In the alley Bond looked up at the gaunt structure that towered above him. The Carlos and Wilmsberg warehouse was not a modern building and would have been more at home amongst the dark satanic mills of the Yorkshire Ridings than in its present setting alongside a carnival route. The windows were barred and black with grime, and a high railing ran around the edge of a deep light well. An iron gate that led down to a basement door was padlocked. Bond let the dancing throng push past him and signalled to Manuela to join him at the gate. ‘I’m going to have a look round,’ he said. ‘You wait here and don’t dance with anybody else.’ He leant forward to kiss her. Manuela’s pleasure was dissipated when she saw that the gesture was no more than cover for an assault on the padlock.

‘You’re not very nice,’ she said. ‘I think I’ll go off with the first man who comes along.’

‘Make it the second,’ said Bond. ‘There’s no point in restricting your choice.’ There was a click and the padlock sprang open. Bond handed it to Manuela, slipping a thin strip of metal back into his pocket. ‘I’d like you to keep this as a memento of our meeting. Hook it on again when I’ve gone down the steps.’ He pushed the gate open a few inches and had disappeared before she could say anything.

The basement door was more difficult because it was bolted on the inside. Bond had to operate a small glass cutter on two of the opaque glass panels before he could reach through and slide back the bolts. A bottle shattered farther along the alley and the foundations of the building seemed to be shaking in time with the samba rhythms. The noise was ear-shattering. If anyone was waiting for him on the other side of the door he would never hear them. The last rusty bolt slid back and Bond withdrew his arm and concentrated on the lock. Within seconds he was applying gentle pressure to the door with his shoulder. He let it open a few inches and then pushed forward hard and sprinted for the first cover that presented itself. He ducked down behind a concrete pillar and watched the door swing in the moonlight. Nothing moved around him, so he relaxed his grip on the Walther PPK and straightened up. Even with the door closed he felt as if he was trapped in a tin box with somebody banging on the lid. Never for one instant did the noise of carnival relax its attempt to grind his eardrums into bone dust. A zig-zag staircase threaded its way up through the floors, and the coloured lanterns in the street blinked through the windows like a light show in a cheap nightclub. Bond put his finger to bed against the trigger of the Walther PPK and started to move forward.

Down in the alley Manuela held her position against the railings and fended off men who asked her if she wanted to dance or make love, or both. In the wall opposite was the entrance to a club, and like a spring tide pouring in and out of a cleft in a rock an unending flow of singing, dancing revellers ebbed and flowed through the garishly lit entrance. The view behind them was like an agitated Turner sunset. Unable to restrain her foot from tapping with the rhythm, Manuela stepped forward and craned to see what was happening.

At the entrance to the alley the figure in the grotesque carnival costume paused unsteadily and the dark, seemingly empty eye sockets levelled on the scene like gun barrels. A reveller attempted to serenade the clumsy giant with a cardboard guitar and was dashed to one side with a force that spun the toy into the basement. An attempt at remonstration faded away abruptly as the figure took a menacing step forward and.revealed that no stilts or padding were needed to build up its size. The man in the costume was over seven feet tall.