Read The Israel Bond Omnibus Online
Authors: Sol Weinstein
7 The Eyes And Thighs Of A Fawn
In the speeding cab to Kennedy, Bond sorted through the mail that had piled up in his box at the Ansonia. Most of it the usual junk mail.... “You may have already won an evening with Lenny Bruce or Pearl Williams in the Imperial Margarine Date-A-Dream Contest”.... “The Schlockmeister Organization is a progressive mutual funds agency which takes what it deems to be sensible risks in purchasing only the most promising blue-sky stock”.... and that accursed rejection from the cartoon book syndicate: “We feel that your idea does not have the general appeal, etc.”
Stupid, shortsighted bastards! He had thrown a multimillion-dollar bonanza in their gray-flannel laps and they had been too myopic to realize its value. Some months ago he had suggested that since they were already making stupendous profits with Superman and Superboy, why not go all the way and milk the idea from its logical beginning? “The new character would be called Supersperm, the adventures of Superman from the moment of conception,” he had written. “Surely, even then there must have been all sorts of hair-raising episodes in the womb for the Sperm of Steel. Think of the possibilities, gentlemen! The doughty infinitesimal dot, clad in red cape and blue leotards, fighting off hosts of fanatical germs launched by Luthor, the Mad Spirochete! Supersperm refereeing a race to the death in the stomach between Anacin, Bufferin and aspirin! Supersperm battling the swollen yellow forces of cholesterol in a last-ditch effort to keep his mother’s arteries....”
The hell with it! he thought bitterly.
An accent textured with thick Brooklynese broke the silence. The cab driver. “You know, buddy, I ride around dese here streets all day, meetin’ all kinds of people; some rich, some poor, some black, some white, some tall, some short. And, you know, buddy, I kinda developed me own philosophy on duh vicissitudes of life.”
Gottenu!
thought Bond, another hackie-philosopher. Spare me, Lord. “What’s your name, my good man?”
“Friedrich Nietzsche.”
Perhaps, Bond mused, this man would be worth listening to. But now there was no time for timelessness. Ahead lay JFK Airport and the Southeast Accident superliner for Miami. He wisely tripled the amount of his flight insurance naming Mother Margolies as his principal beneficiary, with ten per cent allocated to the Espionage Tzeddukah Charity Fund, set up to provide black mink coats for the grief-stricken widows of Israeli operatives.
He sat watching the trucks pump the enriched Humble Company gasoline into the plane’s hungry tanks. An odd name for a Texas product, he reflected. In his many visits to the Lone Star State he had never found anything even remotely humble.
On his way to the first-class Golden Circle area he spotted Zvi, Itzhok and Nochum but professionally gave them no glance of recognition. They were ensconced in the twelve-seat-across tourist section, appearing somewhat cramped and unhappy. Rank hath its privileges, he admitted. An Oy Oy holder deserved the luxurious touches befitting his station. Golden Circle travelers dined on Sea Isle, Georgia, pheasant under Chagall stained glass, swigged chilled Jive 7 wine in ice buckets, served by bright-eyed slinky stewardesses in crisp topless uniforms. For the tourist crowd it was a box of Nabisco fignewtons and orange Kool-Ade, served by hostesses who looked like Blanche Yurka.
Yes, there they sat... Zvi, Itzhok, Nochum, three lads who had helped him tweak the nose of the Russian bear. He could not believe even now that one of them was the traitorous Rotten Roger Colfax. Which one?
Zvi and Itzhok had done the lugging and the strong-arm work; Nochum had acted as liaison and kept in constant telephonic contact with the main office. Telephone! He could have been the caller! But then, any one of them could have stolen a moment to buzz Svetlova.
What did he know of them anyway? Zvi, Jake-of-all-trades, master of disguises, who had joined M 33 and 1/3 several years ago. He knew Zvi longed for a higher designation than 113. “You get all the glamorous assignments, Oy Oy Seven,” Zvi had once jested. Was he insanely jealous deep down? And would such envy impel him to treachery? Zvi Gates with his artificial ear,
[15]
a tragedy caused by Bond’s carelessness. Could that have triggered a resentment which turned to all-consuming hatred?
Itzhok Ben Franklin, a new appointee. He doesn’t chortle at my rapid-fire jokes. That certainly makes him suspect, The young
Sabra
(native-born Israeli) was a taciturn sort; he was, Bond knew, an honor graduate of the Technion Institute, which turned out Israeli’s scientific brain power. Did he consider the low-grade chores allotted to him beneath his intellectual merit?
And Nochum, M.’s nephew, a laughable elf who had failed miserably in a succession of difficult government posts so, thanks to the intercession of his aunt, he had been placed in intelligence. He had more than once begged, “Please, Oy Oy Seven, teach me to kill and grab broads and order food just like you do!” Bond had snickered. “Nochum, stay safe in the playpen. This game is for big boys.” Perhaps I was thoughtless at the time. Would that remark have turned Nochum against me and Eretz Israel?
He became conscious of a rustling in the next seat, a pair of astonishing legs sheathed in Lady Damita Jo hose, followed them up past taut thighs, a bewitchingly tucked-in waist, two full jutting breasts straining to liberate themselves from a satiny-black Tuesday Weld-model bra, to a face... and what a face! Piquant, amusing, with two ebony eyes dit-dotting an unmistakable SOS for SEX. Hands smooth, ringless, fingernails tinted tastefully with Revlon’s new Annette Funicello pudgy-pink shade. The hair, also ebony, in a chic Shetland pony tail, neatly tied with a Pabst Blue Ribbon.
“Hello-o-o-o,” he began. A traditional opener; he’d play it by ear. “Traveling together, are we?”
“We are on the same aircraft. It is a distinct possibility.”
There’s a keen mind to go with that loveliness! “May I introduce myself?”
“You may as well. I can’t do it for you.”
Another flash of wit! I could, he told himself, fall in love with a girl like this in twenty seconds. “My name is Bond. Israel Bond.”
“Mine is Connery. Fawn Connery.” And she glanced at her watch, mumbling “eighteen, nineteen, twenty. Kiss me.”
Four lips (divided fairly, evenly between them) fused in a searing instant outside the boundaries of mortal time and space. One of Bond’s gold inlays slipped like a molten stream down his windpipe.
Jet motors vibrating, the swan neck of Fawn Connery in the crook of his bronze muscular arm, Israel Bond stared vacantly at the earth below. Already the houses were beginning to look like cigar boxes (they were actually, the plane had not taken off yet). But, finally, up it went, soaring over Long Island, Northern New Jersey, Camden in South Jersey (his eyes picked out the huge sign atop the Campbell’s Soup Factory: THIS IS THE HOME OF POP ART) and now they were hurtling southward at five-hundred-and-thirty-five nautical knots per unit of Greenwich median time.
“Is it possible that just one... ?”
“Yes,” she said. “It is love. Order me something to eat.”
He beckoned for the stewardess, pinched her buttocks and began to order breakfast for two. “We’ll both have,” he said, a trained eye scanning the menu, “the
filet
of Neolite sole, medium burnt, with a dash of lekvar
flambé
, two strips of Spam, the dark meat only, from selected Iowa corn-fed Poland China sows, titmouse à la Benedictine on Hollywood Diet bread, the bread of all trim figure-conscious stars, and—uh—I think just a smidgen of the poached raven. Suit you, Fawn?”
“Sounds super,” she said. It was good to be with a man who knew how to order confidently for a lady without stammering like a schoolboy.
“And we’ll share a bottle of Napoleon Solo Brandy. I’ve always preferred the ‘38, don’t you?”
“The ‘38,” she smiled and found herself running gossamer-winged fingertips across his lean navel. This, she knew, was a man.
“What brings you aboard, my sweet?” Bond probed.
“Oh, business in Miami. Then a vacation on El Tiparillo.”
The gray eyes narrowed. “What in God’s name would a lovely thing like you do on El Tiparillo? The whole island is sheer madness.”
“Maybe I need a little sheer madness,” she whispered. “Your kind, Bond.” Her hand again skipped across his groin; a kidney stone shattered into powder.
“There’ll be a long layover in Miami before tomorrow’s plane to El Tiparillo, my Fawn with the fawn eyes. Enough time for a long layover, if I’ve made myself clear,” he said huskily.
“I just might buy it, Israel.”
Midnight, read the hands of the Baby Westclox cooing in its layette on the bureau of Room 1818 at Miami Beach’s Palmetto Roach Hotel. She lay naked, her lips brushing those of the sleeping Israel Bond with butterfly kisses. She looked at the bronzed body which, melded with her own, had taken them flying to the moon where they played among the stars. She recalled with bitterness the other men she had known, piggish sweaty clods such as Colonel Svetlova, General Bolshyeeyit and the rest. How they had used her as a man uses a tissue, crushes it and throws it into a litter basket! Never had any of them struck the spark that releases the fecundity of a woman. But this man, this wonderful man, the man she had pledged to destroy, he had cracked open wide the dam in the reservoir of her being. And she realized with stark frightening ecstasy in his arms that she had enough within her to irrigate the Gobi Desert.
I do believe this wonderful fool is in love with me, she thought. True, he is a killer; yet there is a boyish quality of trust on his cruel face that tells me he cares. I’m trembling, she thought. A man has made me tremble! And
Bozheh moy!
he is the man I must kill!
From her handbag she took a tube of lipstick and twisted it. Out slid the cosmetic. She had only to press it between those sensual lips and he would die of cyanide poisoning in a few seconds. Her hand moved slowly, closer to the lips of Israel Bond.
“No!” Was that her own voice screaming? “I can’t kill you! I can’t!”
Bond was now an uncoiled spring; his body lanced out, hand tearing into his jacket for the tiny Paul Derringer. He stopped. Her face was cupped in her hands; an anguished moan heaved her breasts. “I—I can’t kill you. I love you, Bond.”
He put two Raleighs into his lips, torched the ends of both with a waxy Mexican match which he ignited with a sweep across her buttocks. “Take one now, voyager.”
Still snuffling, she inhaled gratefully.
“Now,” he began coldly. “Let us have the facts. Obviously you are not a simple vacationer. You were sent to kill me. By whom? And how?”
“KGB,” she whimpered. “And with this.” She handed him the lipstick, looking away.
He sniffed it; made a grimace. “Cyanide!” And smirked: “The true lover’s bouquet.”
“You will not believe this, but I love you. I loved you from the moment I sat beside you on the plane, the moment you ordered my
filet
of Neolite sole, the moment you entered my body with your curious admixture of brutishness and tenderness.” She looked away from those gray eyes. “You slept serenely, my love. I could have inserted the lipstick at any time.”
“True,” he acknowledged. “But is this perhaps a ploy to gain my further confidence, Fawn... or whatever your real name is?”
“It is Anna Annatevkah, Corporal, to be precise, acting under the express orders of General Bolshyeeyit who has vowed to repay you for that episode in Moscow. Oh, you fool!” The tears streamed anew. “Can you not see that in betraying my cause I have sealed my own death warrant? I was to have called him tonight with the news of my completed mission.”
“Forgive me, Anna,” he said, holding her next to a heart moistened by a woman’s tears. “I have existed so long in this dirty game that I tend to forget people have true feelings. And now, if you are recovered somewhat, may I offer you a little B & T?”
“B & T?”
“Brutishness and tenderness, dear heart.”
Eyes ashine, she whispered, “Yes, oh yes. Oh yes!”
And the Bondian moon rocket tensed again and zoomed them into Orbit Two.
Now the Baby Westclox said 7 A.M. Its functional face watched Bond and Anna, carrying their luggage, leave Room 1818 for the airport. The Israeli looked at the room door for a second; the ghost of a memory etched a faint smile on his lips. It was in this very room a year ago he had courted death and a sinewy Oriental charmer, Nu Kee.
[16]
This memory had drawn him back to boniface Schuyler Kahn’s Palmetto Roach Hotel after he had first checked in with Fawn at the Fontainebleau. But they had not found their room conductive to love-making; the sight of the naked dead girl on the bed, covered from head to toe with gold paint, had all but dampened their flaming urge. So it was back to Mr. Kahn’s pink-and-brown stucco pleasure palace. “Glad to see you back, Mr. Bond,” the portly little owner had beamed. Poor Kahn, it developed, was having his problems with a new hotel across the street, Horowitz’s Hidalgo Hacienda. Seeking to lure Kahn’s patrons away, unscrupulous Horowitz had started an odious rumor that sharks had been sighted in Kahn’s Olympic-sized swimming pool.