James Bond and Moonraker (4 page)

Q was impervious to any intonation that M chose to employ. He removed a small box from his pocket and withdrew what at first glance appeared to be a narrow leather strap for a wrist watch. ‘Extend your arm please, 007.’

Bond did as he was asked, and the strap was fastened round his wrist. On closer inspection he noticed that it was made like a miniature cartridge holder. Some objects were tucked into the small leather slots. Sartorially it was not something he would have chosen to wear, and he looked at Q questioningly.

‘We’re shortly going to be issuing this as standard equipment,’ said Q. ‘Standard, that is, to double-0 prefixes. It’s activated by nerve impulses from the wrist muscles.’ He positioned Bond to face one of the cork panels on the other side of the room. ‘Extend your arm and jerk your wrist back.’

Bond did as he was told and there was a sharp crack like a twig breaking. A small dart was embedded in the cork so as to be almoit invisible.

Q held the lid of the box up to Bond. ‘There are ten darts in here. Five blue-tipped, with armour-piercing heads, and five red-tipped. They have a cyanide coating that causes death in less than thirty seconds.’

Bond looked at his wrist and shook his head. ‘Very novel, Q. You really must make an effort to get them into the stores for Christmas.’

Bond came down the corridor from the 747 at Los Angeles Airport feeling a familiar sense of jet-lagged irritation that he had to relive half a day of his life. Still, at least nobody had pushed him out of the aeroplane this time, and the cold buffet in first class had been a welcome change from the usual overheated plastic food made particularly unbearable by the bestowal of fatuous titles in gastronomic French. There had even been a well-chilled bottle of PulignyMontrachet rejoicing the eye with the 1971 printed on its damp label.

‘Will James Bond, passenger from London, please make himself known at the British Airways desk.’ Bond heard the message as he came out into the open concourse. and stepped aside from the mass of passengers streaming like lemmings to see if their baggage had accompanied them on the flight. A clean-cut young man wearing a short-sleeved shirt and a button bearing the legend ‘I’m happy when you’re happy’ was waiting behind the British Airways desk with an upturned pencil poised for action. Beside the desk stood a girl of surpassing beauty who could only have been American. Her two rows of perfect teeth were not only white but reflected enough light into the eyes of the beholder to dazzle. The large blue eyes were widely spaced and balanced the longish, straight nose and the warm, generous mouth. The blonde hair which shone like spun silk bounced as if animated by the aura of good health that radiated from every chromosome of her body. As Venus rose off Paphos on the island of Cyprus, so could this girl have appeared out of the sea off Malibu and stalked ashore to take her natural place as a Californian beach goddess. She was wearing a white one-piece uniform that looked like a mechanic’s overall and accentuated her copper tan. From a distance Bond was not certain whether the uniform was worn for fashion or expediency. When he got nearer he saw the word Drax emblazoned on one of the pockets beside an insignia which appeared as a double spire within intersecting orbits. Bond’s interest quickened. The girl looked at him expectantly.

‘Mr Bond?’ There was a faint but discernible edge of hope in her voice that was not unflattering.

‘That’s right.’

‘Hi. I’m Trudi Parker. Mr Drax sent me to fetch you.’ Her manner was relaxed and friendly. There was none of the obsequious formality that Bond was used to receiving when being met at airports.

‘That’s very thoughtful of him,’ said Bond. He prepared to follow the last of the departing passengers from his flight but Trudi held out a slim hand. ‘If you give me your baggage tags I’ll have your stuff sent on. We’re not going that way.’

The young man behind the counter twisted his pencil through his fingers and received the tags as if they were precious gifts. Bond decided that the name Drax clearly stood for something in this part of the world.

‘Follow me.’ Bond did as he was told and found it no hardship. Trudi moved beautifully, rising on to the balls of her feet as if she was about to launch into a dance routine with each step. Her shoulders were broad and well muscled, with one arm slightly more developed than the other. Bond surmised that she did a lot of swimming and probably played a club-standard game of tennis. She led the way into one of the satellite corridors that bore no letter or flight number, and they descended a ramp and emerged into bright sunshine. At a few hundred yards’ distance were the banks of commercial aircraft nuzzling by their satellite corridors like calves at a bulk feeder. Directly ahead, across the runway, was a helicopter of a gyrodyne design that Bond did not recognize. Proudly emblazoned along the side were the words DRAX AIRLINES and the symbol that adorned Trudi’s uniform.

‘Are you my guide and mentor?’ asked Bond.

‘I’m your pilot.’

Bond made a good job of conquering his surprise. California was no place to be accused of sexism. ‘I don’t recognize the helicopter.’

‘There’s no reason why you should. It’s the prototype of a model that Mr Drax is developing.’

‘I didn’t know he owned an airline.’

‘He’s big in communications,’ said Trudi casually. ‘He owns a couple of railways in South America. Then there’s the steamship company in Japan and his trucking business. I don’t really know the half of it. I should think only Mr Drax and maybe some of his accountants do.’ She nodded to another helicopter that was standing by with a Drax pilot in the cockpit. ‘He’ll be along with your bags in a few minutes.’

‘I feel very well looked after,’ said Bond.

‘That’s the idea.’ She gestured towards the helicopter. ‘I guess you’ve flown in one of these before?’

‘Quite a few times,’ said Bond.

‘Good, then I don’t have to give you the reassurance bit.’

‘You mean, we’re just going to take off?’ asked Bond. ‘What about passport formalities? I’ve just flown in from England.’

‘When you’re a guest of Mr Drax, things become very informal.’ Trudi smiled engagingly. ‘Mr Drax wouldn’t invite anybody if it wasn’t in the best interests of the U.S.A.’

‘He seems a law unto himself,’ said Bond.

Trudi climbed into the cockpit. ‘He’s a very successful man. Americans respect success. Not only that, they trust it.’ She waited until Bond was strapped in beside her and then spoke swiftly into the radio, asking for permission to take off. Seconds later they were climbing steeply and spinning away towards the north. Bond looked about him for signs of the much-trumpeted Los Angeles smog and wondered if it was as difficult to run down as a genuine London pea-souper. Below him was an impression of long straight streets running across each other like latticework, whilst broad freeways curved to the horizon. It was like the layout of a giant snakes and ladders board.

‘How far have we got to go?’ asked Bond.

‘A couple of hours. Is this your first time in California?’

Bond admired the relaxed skill with which Trudi controlled the helicopter. As a man who liked nothing better than to be behind the wheel of a fast car, he had always responded to an attractive woman who knew how to handle a machine.

‘I’ve been here a few times,’ said Bond. ‘I know the East Coast better.’

‘You look kinda Ivy League,’ smiled Trudi.

‘You don’t make it sound like a compliment,’ said Bond.

‘I didn’t mean to make it sound like an insult either.’ Trudi pointed down through the perspex. ‘That’s Hollywood.’

‘So there is the big sign on the hill,’ said Bond. ‘It’s a shame nobody gives it a coat of paint.’

‘I’m certain they’d be real grateful for any volunteers.’ Trudi applied fingertip pressure to the controls and the helicopter shifted direction towards the north-east.

Bond smiled to himself. He liked Trudi. She was self-assured and she had a sense of humour. There was no trace of pretension about her. She was also a damned good pilot. Not for the first time, he considered how beauty can almost be a disadvantage to a woman. Most men believe that women purchase beauty from the gods at the price of intelligence. When he had first seen Trudi he had thought that she must be a cover-girl much sought after by toothpaste advertisers. If she had been plain, round-shouldered and dressed in a calf-length smock he would have been prepared to believe that she was a Nobel prize winner.

‘San Fernando on our left,’ indicated Trudi.

Bond scolded himself. Trudi was absorbing too much of his attention. She was a beautiful girl but she was not the reason he was in California. ‘I expect you know why I’m here?’ he said.

Trudi shook her head. ‘Nope. We get a lot of visitors. I don’t know everything that goes on. I’m just a humble pilot in the service of the Drax Corporation.’

‘You know about the crash in Alaska though?’

Trudi’s face grew serious. ‘Yes, I heard about that. The 747 coming down with the Moonraker. They were on their way to England, weren’t they?’

‘That’s right.’ Bond was interested to hear the official version of the crash repeated back to him. The disappearance of the space shuttle had not been made common knowledge. ‘I’m investigating the crash.’

‘So you’ve been to Alaska?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Gee. You must have moved fast.’

Bond studied the girl out of the corner of his eye. There was nothing in her expression to confirm that she knew he had been lying about visiting Alaska.

Los Angeles and its satellite towns had now been left behind and the gyrodyne was flying with impressive speed and smoothness over a flat desert-like plain with a range of mountains in the.distance. Bond calculated that they must be on the outer fringes of the Mojave Desert. It was an inhospitable region bisected by long ravines and dried-up river beds. The ground was reddish-brown and peppered with scrub, and the hot desert wind was throwing up miniature dust storms that cast a fine film against the Perspex canopy. Bond was surprised by the direction they were taking. He had anticipated that Drax’s space venture would be situated near his main California installation, in the San Joaquin valley north of Bakersfield.

‘We’re over the Drax estate now,’ said Trudi. She performed a creditable rendition of the old Western cliché: ‘As far as your eye can see, that’s Drax country.’

‘He owns a lot, doesn’t he?’ said Bond.

Trudi turned her head and there was no humour in her eyes.

‘What he doesn’t own, he doesn’t want.’

Bond let silence reign and watched the sage brush drifting across the plain. Almost imperceptibly the outline of the distant mountains slowly began to harden and the desert give way to more fertile grazing ground browsed over by long-horn cattle that hardly bothered to raise their heads as the helicopter flew over. Ahead, the grass was greener still and there was a sprawling collection of buildings that looked like a small town.

‘This is the main complex,’ said Trudi matter of factly. Bond looked down, impressed. There was a railway line and a small marshalling yard, what appeared to be a medium-sized power station and five enormous hangars, one bearing the word MOONRAKER painted on its roof. Bond thought back to the Hollywood sign. This one was larger. A landing strip and control tower lay adjacent to the hangars and there was a large semi-circular building that Bond guessed must be a wind tunnel.

‘So this is where the Moonraker shuttle is made?’ he asked.

‘That’s right. Workshops, hangars, design and experimental blocks, test centre — the whole caboodle.’

Trudi had taken the chopper down low and Bond could see men in overalls operating fork-lift trucks in the deep valleys between the hangars. Apart from the sign on the roof there was nothing to tell the visitor that this place was not a large factory tucked away in the desert. Just as, perhaps, an ammunition factory might be.

Bond looked ahead and was puzzled to see a line of tall poplar trees. Even more so when he caught a glimpse of what lay beyond them. A French Renaissance château scarcely smaller than Chambord, its turrets gleaming in the sun like something out of a fairy story. Bond refused to believe what he was seeing. It must be a façade. Some remnant from a long forgotten film shot in the desert that had been left standing because of its amusement value. Look behind it and there would be an untidy framework of scaffolding to keep the thing upright. But the stones looked real enough, as did the formal French gardens with their box hedges, shingle paths and orderly battalions of identical flowers. Bond turned to Trudi and saw the amused expression on her face.

‘Every stone brought from the Loire Valley,’ she said.

‘By Hugo Drax?’

‘Who else?’

Bond looked again at the majestic sweep of the white stone and the recessed windows twinkling like rows of scales on a fish’s back. ‘Magnificent. Why didn’t he buy the Eiffel Tower as well?’

Trudi smiled. ‘He did, but the French government refused him an export permit.’

Bond grinned back at her. ‘Oh well, I suppose if you have to live next to your work you might as well do it in comfort.’

He returned his gaze to the gardens. They were almost over-generously endowed with marble statues of athletes and goddesses reaching from their plinths as if desperately trying to attract attention. Their very number suggested that they were genuine and that Hugo Drax was a man who could never have enough of a good thing. The gyro-dyne swept around the corner of the building and Bond looked in vain for the scaffolding. A formal lawn fronted the long expanse of the building and on it fifty young men and women lay on their backs in five rows of ten. As Bond focussed on the scene they sprang to their feet, raised their arms above their heads and began to rotate their upper bodies on the fulcrum of their hips. They were dressed in black leotards and at first glance appeared like a ballet class undergoing a programme of loosening-up calisthenics. What was immediately obvious to Bond as they stretched their arms upwards and tilted back their heads was that they were the most beautiful group of people he had ever seen. He looked at Trudi questioningly.