Eleven: Bedtime Story

I HOISTED myself up onto the drainboard of the sink just beside him so that he could talk to me quietly- and so that I could be near to him. I refused another cigarette, and he lit one and gazed for a long minute into the mirror, watching the two gangsters. I looked too. The two men just stared back with a passive, indifferent hostility that seeped steadily across the room like poison gas. I didn't much like their indifference and their watchfulness. It seemed so powerful, so implacable, as if the odds were on their side and they had all the time in the world. But this James Bond didn't seem worried. He just seemed to be weighing them up, like a chess player. There was a certitude of power, of superiority, in his eyes that worried me. He hadn't seen these men in action. He couldn't possibly know what they were capable of, how at any moment they might just blaze away with their guns, blowing our heads off like coconuts in a circus sideshow, and then toss our bodies in the lake with stones to keep them down. But then James Bond began talking, and I forgot my nightmares and just watched his face and listened.
"In England," he said, "when a man, or occasionally a woman, comes over from the other side, from the Russian side, with important information, there's a fixed routine. Take Berlin, for instance, and that's the most usual come-over route. To begin with they get taken to intelligence headquarters and get treated at first with extra suspicion. That's to try and take care of double agents-people who pretend to come over and, once they've been cleared by security, begin spying on us from inside, so to speak, and pass their stuff back to the Russians. There are also triple agents-people who do what the doubles have done, but change their minds and, under our control, pass phony intelligence back to the Russians. Do you understand? It's nothing but a complicated game, really. But then so's International politics, diplomacy-all the trappings of nationalism and the power complex that goes on between countries. Nobody will stop playing the game. It's like the hunting instinct."
"Yes, I see. It all seems idiotic to my generation. Like playing that old game 'Attaque,' really. We need some more Jack Kennedys. It's all these old people about. They ought to hand the world over to younger people who haven't got the idea of war stuck in their subconscious. As if it were the only solution. Like beating children. It's much the same thing. It's all out of date-Stone Age stuff."
He smiled. "As a matter of fact I agree, but don't spread your ideas too widely or I'll find myself out of a job. Anyway, once the come-over has got through the strainer in Berlin, he's flown to England and the bargain gets made-you tell us all you know about the Russian rocket sites and in exchange we'll give you a new name, a British passport, and a hideout where the Russians will never find you. That's what they're most frightened of, of course, the Russians getting after them and killing them. And, if they play, they get the choice of Canada, Australia, New Zealand or Africa. So, when they've told all they know, they get flown out to the country they've chosen, and there a reception committee run by the local police, a very hush-hush affair, of course, takes them over and they're gradually eased into a job and into a community just as if they were a bona fide immigrant. It nearly always works all right. They get homesick to begin with, and have trouble settling down, but some member of the reception committee will always be at hand to give them any help they need."
James Bond lit another cigarette. "I'm not telling you anything the Russians don't know. The only secret side of the business is the addresses of these people. There's a man I'll call Boris. He's been settled in Canada, in Toronto. He was a prize-twenty-four-carat. He was a top naval constructor in Kronstadt-high up in their nuclear submarine team. He got away to Finland and then to Stockholm. We picked him up and flew him to England. The Russians don't often say anything about their defectors-just curse and let them go. If they're important, they round up their families and ship them off to Siberia-to frighten other waverers. But it was different with Boris. They sent out a general call to their secret services to eliminate him. As luck would have it, an organization called SPECTRE somehow listened in."
James Bond took a hard look at the two men on the other side of the room. They hadn't moved. They sat there and watched and waited. What for? James Bond turned back to me. "I'm not boring you?"
"Oh, no. Of course not. It's thrilling. These SPECTRE people. Haven't I read about them somewhere? In the papers?"
"I expect you have. Less than a year ago there was this business of the stolen atomic bombs. It was called Operation Thunderball. Remember?" His eyes went far away. "It was in the Bahamas."
"Oh, yes. Of course I remember. It was in all the papers I could hardly believe it. It was like something out of a thriller. Why? Were you mixed up in it?"
James Bond smiled. "On the sidelines. But the point is that we never cleaned up SPECTRE. The top man got away. It was a kind of independent spy network-The Special Executive for Counterespionage, Terrorism, Revenge, and Extortion,' they call themselves. Well, they've got going again and, as I say, they came to hear that the Russians wanted Boris killed and somehow they found out where he was. Don't ask me how. These people are too damned well informed for comfort. So they put it to the top K.G.B. man in Paris, the local head of the Russian Secret Service, that they'd do the job for one hundred thousand pounds. Presumably Moscow agreed, because the next thing that happened was that Ottawa-the famous Mounties-got on to us. They have a Special Branch that we work with pretty closely on this sort of thing, and they reported that there was an ex-Gestapo man in Toronto, chap called Horst Uhlmann, making contact with the gangs there, and did we know anything about him? It seemed he wanted some unspecified foreigner bumped off and was prepared to pay fifty thousand dollars for the job. Well, two and two got put together, and some bright chap in our show had a hunch this might be an attempt on Boris by the Russians. So"-James Bond's mouth curled down-"I was sent out to look into the business."
He smiled at me. "You wouldn't rather switch on the television?"
"Oh, no. Go on, please."
"Well, you know they've been having a lot of trouble in Toronto. It's anyway a tough town, but now gang war has broken out in a big way, and you probably read that the Mounties even went so far as to call in two top C.I.D. sleuths from Scotland Yard to help them out. One of these C.I.D chaps had managed to plant a smart young Canadian in 'the Mechanics,' which is the name of the toughest Toronto gang, with affiliations over the border with Chicago and Detroit. And it was this young man who got wind of Uhlmann and what he wanted done. Well, I and my Mountie pals went to work and, to cut a long story short, we found out that it was Boris who was the target and that the Mechanics had agreed to do the job last Thursday-that's just about a week ago. Uhlmann had gone to ground, and we couldn't get a smell of him. All we could discover from our man with the Mechanics was that he had agreed to lead the murder squad that was to consist of three top gunmen from the mob. It was to be a frontal attack on the apartment where Boris lived. Nothing fancy. They were just going to blast their way through the front door with sub-machine-guns, shoot him to bits, and get away. It was to be at night, just before midnight, and the Mechanics would mount a permanent watch on the apartment house to see that Boris came home from his job and didn't go out again.
"Well, apart from protecting Boris, my main job was to get this Horst Uhlmann, because by now we were certain as could be that he was a SPECTRE man, and one of my jobs is to go after these people wherever they show up. Of course, we couldn't leave Boris in danger, but if we got him away to safety there would be no attempt on his life and so no Uhlmann. So I had to make a rather unpleasant suggestion." James Bond smiled grimly. "Unpleasant for me, that is. From his photographs, I had noticed that there was a superficial resemblance between Boris and me-about my age, tall, dark, clean-shaven. So I took a look at him from a ghost car one day-that's an undercover prowl car-and watched how he walked and what he wore. Then I suggested that we get Boris away on the day before the murder job, and that I should take his place on the last walk back to his apartment."
I couldn't help saying anxiously, "Oh, but you shouldn't have taken the risk. Supposing they'd changed the plan. Supposing they'd decided to do it as you walked down the street, or with a time bomb or something!"
He shrugged. "We thought of all that. It was a calculated risk, and it's those I'm paid for taking." He smiled. "Anyway, here I am. But it wasn't nice walking down that street, and I was glad to get inside. The Mounties had taken over the flat opposite to Boris, and I knew I was all right and simply had to play the tethered goat while the sportsmen shot the wild game. I could have stayed out of the flat, hidden somewhere in the building until it was all over, but I had a hunch that the goat must be a real goat, and I was right, because at eleven o'clock the telephone rang and a man's voice said. 'Is that Mr. Boris?' giving his assumed name. I said, 'Yes. Who is dat?' trying to sound foreign, and the man said, 'Thank you. Telephone Directory here. We're just checking the subscribers in your district. Night.' I said good night and thanked my stars I had been there to take the bogus call that was to make sure Boris was at home.
"The last hour was nervous work. There was going to be a lot of gunfire and probably a lot of death, and no one likes the prospect of those things, even if they don't expect to be hit. I had a couple of guns, heavy ones that really stop people, and at ten to twelve I took up my position to the right of the door in an angle of solid masonry and got ready just in case Uhlmann or one of the hoodlums managed to bust through the Mounties across the passage. To tell you the truth, as the minutes went by and I could imagine the killer car coming down the street and the men piling out and running softly up the stairs, I wished 1 had accepted the Mounties' offer that one of their men should share this vigil, as they called it, with me. But it would have been a five-hour tкte-а-tкte and, apart from not knowing what we would talk about during all that time, I've always had a preference for operating alone. It's just the way I'm made. Well, the minutes and the seconds ticked by, and then, bang on time, at five minutes to midnight, I heard a rush of rubber soles on the stairs and then all hell broke loose."
James Bond paused. He rubbed a hand down over his face. It was a gesture that was either to clear his mind's eye or to try and wipe some memory away from it. Then he lit another cigarette and went on.
"I heard the lieutenant in charge of the Mountie party shout, 'It's the law! Get 'em up!' And then there was a mixture of single shots and bursts from the chopper"- he grinned-"sorry, sub-machine-gun, and, somebody screamed. Then the lieutenant shouted, 'Get that man!' and the next moment the lock blew off the door beside me and a man charged in. He held a smoking machine-gun tight against the hip, which is the way to use them, and he whirled from right to left in the bed-sitter, looking for Boris. I knew it was Uhlmann, the ex-Gestapo man. One's had to get to know the smell of a German, and of a Russian for the matter of that, in my line of work, and I had him in my sights. I shot at his gun and blasted it out of his hands. But he was quick. He jumped behind the open door. The door was only a thin bit of wood. I couldn't take a chance on him having another gun and firing first, so I sprayed a wide Z of bullets through the wood, bending my knees lower as I did so. Just as well I did this, because he fired a quick burst that nearly parted my hair when I was almost on my knees. But two of my bullets had got him, in the left shoulder and right hip as it turned out, and he crashed down behind the door and lay quiet.
"The rest of the battle outside had disappeared down the stairs after the gunmen, but a wounded Mountie suddenly appeared at the entrance to my room on hands and knees to help me. He said, 'Want a hand, feller?' and Uhlmann fired through the door at the voice and-and, well, he killed the man. But that gave me the height of Uhlmann's gun and I fired almost as he did, and then I ran out into the center of the room to give him some more if need be. But he didn't need any more. He was still alive, and when the remains of the Mounties came back up the stairs we took him down and into an ambulance and tried to get him to talk in hospital. But he wouldn't-a mixture of Gestapo and SPECTRE is a good one-and he died the next morning."
James Bond looked me in the eyes, but his own didn't see me. He said, "We lost two of our side and another wounded. They lost the German, and one of theirs, and the other two won't last long. But the battlefield was a nasty sight and, well"-his face looked suddenly drawn and tired-"I've seen enough of this sort of thing. After the various post-mortems were over I wanted to get away. My headquarters, and the Mounties backed them up, wanted me to report the whole case to Washington, to our opposite numbers there, to get their help in cleaning up the American end of the Mechanics gang. The Mechanics had been given a nasty jolt, and the Mounties Special Branch thought it would be a good idea to follow up while they were still groggy. I said all right, but that I would like to drive down and not just dash off in an aeroplane or train. That was allowed so long as I didn't take more than three days, and I hired this car and started at dawn this morning. I was going all right, pretty fast, when I ran into the hell of a storm, the tail of yours I suppose. I got through it as far as Lake George, and I meant to stay the night there, but it looked such a hellish place that when I saw a sign up at a side road advertising this motel I took a chance." He smiled at me, and now he looked quite cheerful again. "Perhaps something told me you were at the end of the road and that you were in trouble. Anyway, I had a puncture a mile from here, and here I am." He smiled again, and reached out and put his hand on mine on the counter. "Funny the way things work out!"
"But you must be absolutely beat, driving all that way."
"I've got something for that. Be a good girl and give me another cup of coffee."
While I busied myself with the percolator, he opened his case and took out a small bottle of white pills. He took out two and when I gave him the coffee he swallowed them down. "Benzedrine. That'll keep me awake for tonight. I'll fit in some sleep tomorrow." His eyes went to the mirror. "Hullo. Here they come." He gave me a smile of encouragement. "Now just don't worry. Get some sleep. I'll be around to see there's no trouble."
The music on the radio faded, and musical chimes sounded midnight.