Inattentively he skimmed through the remaining pages, ticked himself off the distribution slip, and threw the docket into his out-tray.
His headache was still sitting over his right eye as if it had been nailed there. He opened one of the drawers of his desk and took out a bottle of Phensic. He considered asking his secretary for a glass of water, but he disliked being cosseted. With distaste he crunched two tablets between his teeth and swallowed down the harsh powder.
Then he lit a cigarette and got up and stood by the window. He looked across the green panorama far below him and, without seeing it, let his eyes wander aimlessly along the jagged horizon of London while his mind focused on the strange events of the night before.
And the more he thought about it, the stranger it all seemed.
Why should Drax, a millionaire, a public hero, a man with a unique position the country, why should this remarkable man cheat at cards? What could he achieve by it? What could he prove to himself? Did he think that he was so much a law unto himself, so far above the common herd and their puny canons of behaviour that he could spit in the face of public opinion?
Bond’s mind paused. Spit in their faces. That just about described his manner at Blades. The combination of superiority and scorn. As if he was dealing with human muck so far beneath contempt that there was no need to put up even a pretence of decent behaviour in its company.
Presumably Drax enjoyed gambling. Perhaps it eased the tensions in him, the tensions that showed in his harsh voice, his nail-biting, the constant sweating. But he mustn’t lose. It would be contemptible to lose to these inferior people. So, at whatever risk, he must cheat his way to victory. As for the possibility of detection, presumably he thought that he could bluster his way out of any corner. If he thought about it at all. And people with obsessions, reflected Bond, were blind to danger. They even courted it in a perverse way. Kleptomaniacs would try to steal more and more difficult objects. Sex maniacs would parade their importunities as if they were longing to be arrested. Pyromaniacs often made no attempt to avoid being linked with their fire-raising.
But what obsession was it that was consuming this man? What was the origin of the compulsive urge that was driving him down the steep hill into the sea?
All the signs pointed to paranoia. Delusions of grandeur and, behind that, of persecution. The contempt in his face. The bullying voice. The expression of secret triumph with which he had met defeat after a moment of bitter collapse. The triumph of the maniac who knows that whatever the facts may say he is right. Whoever may try to thwart him he can overcome. For him there is no defeat because of his secret power. He knows how to make gold. He can fly like a bird. He is almighty – the man in the padded cell who is God.
Yes, thought Bond, gazing blindly out over Regent’s Park. That is the solution. Sir Hugo Drax is a raving paranoiac. That is the power which has driven him on, by devious routes, to make his millions. That is the mainspring of the gift to England of this giant rocket that will annihilate our enemies. Thanks to the all-powerful Drax.
But who can tell how near to breaking-point this man is? Who has penetrated behind that bluster, behind all that red hair on his face, who has read the signs as more than the effect of his humble origins or of sensitivity about his war wounds?
Apparently no one. Then was he, Bond, right in his analysis? What was it based on? Was this glimpse through a shuttered window into a man’s soul sufficient evidence? Perhaps others had caught such a glimpse. Perhaps there had been other moments of supreme tension in Singapore, Hong Kong, Nigeria, Tangier, when some merchant sitting across a table from Drax had noticed the sweat and the bitten nails and the red blaze of the eyes in the face from which all the blood had suddenly been drained.
If one had time, thought Bond, one ought to seek those people out, if they existed, and really find out about this man, perhaps get him in the killing-bottle before it was too late.
Too late? Bond smiled to himself. What was he being so dramatic about? What had this man done to him? Made him a present of £15,000. Bond shrugged. It was none of his business anyway. But that last remark of his ‘Spend it quickly, Commander Bond’. What had he meant by that? It must be those words, Bond reflected, that had stayed in the back of his mind and made him ponder so carefully over the problem of Drax.
Bond turned brusquely away from the window. To hell with it, he thought. I’m getting obsessed myself. Now then. Fifteen thousand pounds. A miraculous windfall. All right then, he would spend it quickly. He sat down at his desk and picked up a pencil. He thought for a moment and then wrote carefully on a memorandum pad headed ‘Top Secret’:
(1) Rolls-Bentley Convertible, say £5000.
(2) Three diamond clips at £250 each, £750.
He paused. That still left nearly £10,000. Some clothes, paint the flat, a set of the new Henry Cotton irons, a few dozen of the Taittinger champagne. But those could wait. He would go that afternoon and buy the clips and talk to Bentley’s. Put all the rest into gold shares. Make a fortune. Retire.
In angry protest the red telephone splintered the silence.
‘Can you come up? M. wants you.’ It was the Chief of Staff, speaking urgently.
‘Coming,’ said Bond, suddenly alert. ‘Any clue?’
‘Search me,’ said the Chief of Staff. ‘Hasn’t touched his signals yet. Been over at the Yard and the Ministry of Supply all the morning.’
He rang off.
A
FEW
minutes later Bond was walking through the familiar door and the green light had gone on over the entrance.
M. looked sharply at him. ‘You look pretty dreadful, 007,’ he said. ‘Sit down.’
It’s business, thought Bond, his pulse quickening. No Christian names today. He sat down. M. was studying some pencilled notes on a scratch-pad. He looked up. His eyes were no longer interested in Bond.
‘Trouble down at Drax’s plant last night,’ he said. ‘Double killing. Police tried to get hold of Drax. Didn’t think of Blades apparently. Caught up with him when he got back to the Ritz about half-past one this morning. Two men from the Moonraker got shot in a public house near the plant. Both dead. Drax told the police he couldn’t care less and then hung up. Typical of the man. He’s down there now. Taking the thing a bit more seriously, I gather.’
‘Curious coincidence,’ said Bond thoughtfully. ‘But where do we come in, sir? Isn’t it a police job?’
‘Partly,’ said M., ‘but it happens that we’re responsible for a lot of the key personnel down there. Germans,’ he added. ‘I’d better explain.’ He looked down at his pad. ‘It’s an R.A.F. establishment and the cover-plan is that it’s part of the big radar network along the East Coast. The R.A.F. are responsible for guarding the perimeter and the Ministry of Supply only has authority at the centre where the work is going on. It’s on the edge of the cliffs between Dover and Deal. The whole area covers about a thousand acres, but the site itself is about two hundred. On the site there are only Drax and fifty-two others left. All the construction team have gone.’
Pack of cards and a joker, reflected Bond.
‘Fifty of these are Germans,’ continued M. ‘More or less all the guided missile experts the Russians didn’t get. Drax paid for them to come over here and work on the Moonraker. Nobody was very happy with the arrangement but there was no alternative. The Ministry of Supply couldn’t spare any of their experts from Woomera. Drax had to find his men where he could. To strengthen the R.A.F. security people, the Ministry of Supply appointed their own security officer to live on the site. Man called Major Tallon.’
M. paused and looked up at the ceiling.
‘He was one of the two who got killed last night. Shot by one of the Germans, who then shot himself.’
M. lowered his eyes and looked at Bond. Bond said nothing, waiting for the rest of the story.
‘It happened in a public house near the site. Plenty of witnesses. Apparently it’s an inn on the edge of the site that is in bounds to the men. Must have somewhere to go to, I suppose.’ M. paused. He kept his eyes on Bond. ‘Now you asked where we come in on all this. We come in because we cleared this particular German, and all the others, before they were allowed to come over here. We’ve got the dossiers of all of them. So when this happened the first thing R.A.F. Security and Scotland Yard wanted was the dossier of the dead man. They got on to the Duty Officer last night and he dug the papers out of Records and sent them over to the Yard. Routine job. He noted it in the log. When I got here this morning and saw the entry in the log I suddenly got interested.’ M. spoke quietly. ‘After spending the evening with Drax, it was, as you remarked, a curious coincidence.’
‘Very curious, sir,’ said Bond, still waiting.
‘And there’s one more thing,’ concluded M. ‘And this is the real reason why I’ve let myself get involved instead of keeping clear of the whole business. This has got to take priority over everything.’ M.’s voice was very quiet. ‘They’re going to fire the Moonraker on Friday. Less than four days’ time. Practice shoot.’
M. paused and reached for his pipe and busied himself lighting it.
Bond said nothing. He still couldn’t see what all this had to do with the Secret Service whose jurisdiction runs only outside the United Kingdom. It seemed a job for the Special Branch of Scotland Yard, or conceivably for M.I.5. He waited. He looked at his watch. It was noon.
M. got his pipe going and continued.
‘But quite apart from that,’ said M., ‘I got interested because last night I got interested in Drax.’
‘So did I, sir,’ said Bond.
‘So when I read the log,’ said M., ignoring Bond’s comment, ‘I telephoned Vallance at the Yard and asked him what it was all about. He was rather worried and asked me to come over. I said I didn’t want to tread on Five’s corns but he said he had already spoken to them. They maintained it was a matter between my department and the police since it was we who had cleared the German who did the killing. So I went along.’
M. paused and looked down at his notes.
‘The place is on the coast about three miles north of Dover,’ he said. ‘There’s this inn nearby on the main coast road, the “World Without Want”, and the men from the site go there in the evening. Last night, about seven-thirty, the Security man from the Ministry, this man Tallon, went along there and was having a whisky and soda and chatting away with some of the Germans when the murderer, if you like to call him that, came in and walked straight up to Tallon. He pulled out a Luger – no serial numbers by the way – out of his shirt and said,’ M. looked up, ‘ “I love Gala Brand. You shall not have her.” Then he shot Tallon through the heart and put the smoking gun in his own mouth and pulled the trigger.’
‘What a ghastly business,’ said Bond. He could see every detail of the shambles in the crowded taproom of a typical English public house. ‘Who’s the girl?’
‘That’s another complication,’ said M. ‘She’s an agent of the Special Branch. Bilingual in German. One of Vallance’s best girls. She and Tallon were the only two non-Germans Drax had with him on the site. Vallance is a suspicious chap. Has to be. This Moonraker plan is obviously the most important thing happening in England. Without telling anyone and acting more or less on instinct, he planted this Brand girl on Drax and somehow fixed for her to be taken on as his private secretary. Been on the site since the beginning. She’s had absolutely nothing to report. Says that Drax is an excellent chief, except for his manners, and drives his men like hell. Apparently he started by making passes at her, even after she’d spun the usual yarn about being engaged, but after she’d shown she could defend herself, which of course she can, he gave up and she says they’re perfectly good friends. Naturally she knew Tallon, but he was old enough to be her father, besides being happily married with four children, and she told Vallance’s man who got a word with her this morning that he’s taken her to the cinema in a paternal sort of way twice in eighteen months. As for the killer, man called Egon Bartsch, he was an electronics expert whom she barely knew by sight.’
‘What do his friends say about all this?’ asked Bond.
‘The man who shared his room with him backs up Bartsch. Says he was madly in love with the Brand woman and put his whole lack of success down to “The Englishman”. He says Bartsch had been getting very moody and reserved lately and that he wasn’t a bit surprised to hear of the shooting.’
‘Sounds pretty corroborative,’ said Bond. ‘Somehow one can see the picture. One of those highly strung nervous chaps with the usual German chip on the shoulder. What does Vallance think?’
‘He’s not sure,’ said M. ‘He’s mainly concerned with protecting his girl from the Press and seeing that her cover doesn’t get blown. All the papers are on to it, of course. It’ll be in the midday editions. And they’re all howling for a picture of the girl. Vallance is having one cooked up and got down to her that’ll look more or less like any girl, but just sufficiently like her. She’ll send it out this evening. Fortunately the reporters can’t get near the place. She’s refusing to talk and Vallance is praying that some friend or relation won’t blow the gaff. They’re holding the inquest today and Vallance is hoping that the case will be officially closed by this evening and that the papers will have to let it die for lack of material.’
‘What about this practice shoot?’ asked Bond.
‘They’re sticking to the schedule,’ said M. ‘Noon on Friday. They’re using a dummy warhead and firing her vertically with only three-quarter tanks. They’re clearing about a hundred square miles of the North Sea from about Latitude 52 up. That’s north of a line joining The Hague and the Wash. Full details are going to be given out by the P.M. on Thursday night.’
M. stopped talking. He swivelled his chair round so that he could look out of the window. Bond heard a distant clock chime the four quarters. One o’clock. Was he going to miss his lunch again? If M. would stop ferreting about in the business of other departments he could have a quick lunch and get round to Bentley’s. Bond shifted slightly in his chair.