Текст книги "The James Bond Anthology"

Автор книги: Ian Fleming

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 190 страниц)

Bond reflected it was no wonder that the Big Man found Voodooism such a powerful weapon on minds that still recoiled at a white chicken’s feather or crossed sticks in the road – right in the middle of the shining capital city of the Western world.

‘I’m glad we came up here,’ said Bond. ‘I’m beginning to get the hang of Mr Big. One just doesn’t catch the smell of all this in a country like England. We’re a superstitious lot there of course – particularly the Celts – but here one can almost hear the drums.’

Leiter grunted. ‘I’ll be glad to get back to my bed,’ he said. ‘But we need to size up this guy before we decide how to get at him.’

Ma Frazier’s was a cheerful contrast to the bitter streets. They had an excellent meal of Little Neck Clams and Fried Chicken Maryland with bacon and sweet corn. ‘We’ve got to have it,’ said Leiter. ‘It’s the national dish.’

It was very civilized in the warm restaurant. Their waiter seemed glad to see them and pointed out various celebrities, but when Leiter slipped in a question about Mr Big the waiter seemed not to hear. He kept away from them until they called for their bill.

Leiter repeated the question.

‘Sorry, Sah,’ said the waiter briefly. ‘Ah cain’t recall a gemmun of dat name.’

By the time they left the restaurant it was ten-thirty and the Avenue was almost deserted. They took a cab to the Savoy Ballroom, had a Scotch-and-soda, and watched the dancers.

‘Most modern dances were invented here,’ said Leiter. ‘That’s how good it is. The Lindy Hop, Truckin’, the Susie Q, the Shag. All started on that floor. Every big American band you’ve ever heard of is proud that it once played here – Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway, Noble Sissle, Fletcher Henderson. It’s the Mecca of jazz and jive.’

They had a table near the rail round the huge floor. Bond was spellbound. He found many of the girls very beautiful. The music hammered its way into his pulse until he almost forgot what he was there for.

‘Gets you, doesn’t it?’ said Leiter at last. ‘I could stay here all night. Better move along. We’ll miss out Small’s Paradise. Much the same as this, but not quite in the same class. Think I’ll take you to “Yeah Man“, back on Seventh. After that we must get moving to one of Mr Big’s own joints. Trouble is, they don’t open till midnight. I’ll pay a visit to the washroom while you get the check. See if I can get a line on where we’re likely to find him tonight. We don’t want to have to go to all his places.’

Bond paid the check and met Leiter downstairs in the narrow entrance hall.

Leiter drew him outside and they walked up the street looking for a cab.

‘Cost me twenty bucks,’ said Leiter, ‘but the word is he’ll be at The Boneyard. Small place on Lenox Avenue. Quite close to his headquarters. Hottest strip in town. Girl called G-G Sumatra. We’ll have another drink at “Yeah Man“ and hear the piano. Move on at about twelve-thirty.’The big switchboard, now only a few blocks away, was almost quiet. The two men had been checked in and out of Sugar Ray’s, Ma Frazier’s and the Savoy Ballroom. Midnight had them entering ‘Yeah Man’. At twelve-thirty the final call came and then the board was silent.

Mr Big spoke on the house-phone. First to the head waiter.

‘Two white men coming in in five minutes. Give them the Z table.’

‘Yes, Sir, Boss,’ said the head waiter. He hurried across the dance floor to a table away on the right, obscured from most of the room by a wide pillar. It was next to the Service entrance but with a good view of the floor and the band opposite.

It was occupied by a party of four, two men and two girls.

‘Sorry folks,’ said the head waiter. ‘Been a mistake. Table’s reserved. Newspaper men from downtown.’

One of the men began to argue.

‘Move, Bud,’ said the head waiter crisply. ‘Lofty, show these folks to table F. Drinks is on the house. Sam,’ he beckoned to another waiter, ‘clear the table. Two covers.’ The party of four moved docilely away, mollified by the prospect of free liquor. The head waiter put a Reserved sign on table Z, surveyed it and returned to his post at his table-plan on the high desk beside the curtained entrance.

Meanwhile Mr Big had made two more calls on the house-phone. One to the Master of Ceremonies.

‘Lights out at the end of G-G’s act.’

‘Yes, Sir, Boss,’ said the MC with alacrity.

The other call was to four men who were playing craps in the basement. It was a long call, and very detailed.

6 | TABLE Z

At twelve forty-five Bond and Leiter paid off their cab and walked in under the sign which announced ‘The Boneyard’ in violet and green neon.

The thudding rhythm and the sour-sweet smell rocked them as they pushed through the heavy curtains inside the swing door. The eyes of the hat-check girls glowed and beckoned.

‘Have you reserved, Sir?’ asked the head waiter.

‘No,’ said Leiter. ‘We don’t mind sitting at the bar.’

The head waiter consulted his table-plan. He seemed to decide. He put his pencil firmly through a space at the end of the card.

‘Party hasn’t shown. Guess Ah cain’t hold their res’vation all night. This way, please.’ He held his card high over his head and led them round the small crowded dance floor. He pulled out one of the two chairs and removed the ‘Reserved’ sign.

‘Sam,’ he called a waiter over. ‘Look after these gemmums order.’ He moved away.

They ordered Scotch-and-soda and chicken sandwiches.

Bond sniffed. ‘Marihuana,’ he commented.

‘Most of the real hep-cats smoke reefers,’ explained Leiter. ‘Wouldn’t be allowed most places.’

Bond looked round. The music had stopped. The small four-piece band, clarinet, double-bass, electric guitar and drums, was moving out of the corner opposite. The dozen or so couples were walking and jiving to their tables and the crimson light was turned off under the glass dance floor. Instead, pencil-thin lights in the roof came on and hit coloured glass witchballs, larger than footballs, that hung at intervals round the wall. They were of different hues, golden, blue, green, violet, red. As the beams of light hit them, they glowed like coloured suns. The walls, varnished black, mirrored their reflections as did the sweat on the ebony faces of the men. Sometimes a man sitting between two lights showed cheeks of different colour, green on one side, perhaps, and red on the other. The lighting made it impossible to distinguish features unless they were only a few feet away. Some of the lights turned the girls’ lipstick black, others lit their whole faces in a warm glow on one side and gave the other profile the luminosity of a drowned corpse.

The whole scene was macabre and livid, as if El Greco had done a painting by moonlight of an exhumed graveyard in a burning town.

It was not a large room, perhaps sixty foot square. There were about fifty tables and the customers were packed in like black olives in a jar. It was hot and the air was thick with smoke and the sweet, feral smell of two hundred negro bodies. The noise was terrific – an undertone of the jabber of negroes enjoying themselves without restraint, punctuated by sharp bursts of noise, shouts and high giggles, as loud voices called to each other across the room.

‘Sweet Jeessus, look who’s hyar …’

‘Where you been keepin yoself, baby …’

‘Gawd’s troof. It’s Pinkus … Hi Pinkus …’

‘Cmon over …’

‘Lemme be … Lemme be, I’se telling ya …’ (The noise of a slap.)

‘Where’s G-G. Cmon G-G. Strut yo stuff …’

From time to time a man or girl would erupt on to the dance floor and start a wild solo jive. Friends would clap the rhythm. There would be a burst of catcalls and whistles. If it was a girl, there would be cries of ‘Strip, strip, strip,’ ‘Get hot, baby!’ ‘Shake it, shake it,’ and the MC would come out and clear the floor amidst groans and shouts of derision.

The sweat began to bead on Bond’s forehead. Leiter leant over and cupped his hands. ‘Three exits. Front. Service behind us. Behind the band.’ Bond nodded. At that moment he felt it didn’t matter. This was nothing new to Leiter, but for Bond it was a close-up of the raw material on which The Big Man worked, the clay in his hands. The evening was gradually putting flesh on the dossiers he had read in London and New York. If the evening ended now, without any closer sight of Mr Big himself, Bond still felt his education in the case would be almost complete. He took a deep draught of his whisky. There was a burst of applause. The MC had come out on to the dance floor, a tall negro in immaculate tails with a red carnation in his button hole. He stood, holding up his hands. A single white spotlight caught him. The rest of the room went dark.

There was silence.

‘Folks,’ announced the MC with a broad flash of gold and white teeth. ‘This is it.’

There was excited clapping.

He turned to the left of the floor, directly across from Leiter and Bond.

He flung out his right hand. Another spot came on.

‘Mistah Jungles Japhet ’n his drums.’

A crash of applause, catcalls, whistles.

Four grinning negroes in flame-coloured shirts and peg-top white trousers were revealed, squatting astride four tapering barrels with rawhide membranes. The drums were of different sizes. The negroes were all gaunt and stringy. The one sitting astride the bass drum rose briefly and shook clasped hands at the spectators.

‘Voodoo drummers from Haiti,’ whispered Leiter.

There was silence. With the tips of their fingers the drummers began a slow, broken beat, a soft rumba shuffle.

‘And now, friends,’ announced the MC, still turned towards the drums, ‘G-G …’ he paused, ‘SUMATRA.’

The last word was a yell. He began to clap. There was pandemonium in the room, a frenzy of applause. The door behind the drums burst open and two huge negroes, naked except for gold loincloths, ran out on to the floor carrying between them, her arms round their necks, a tiny figure, swathed completely in black ostrich feathers, a black domino across her eyes.

They put her down in the middle of the floor. They bowed down on either side of her until their foreheads met the ground. She took two paces forward. With the spotlight off them, the two negroes melted away into the shadows and through the door.

The MC had disappeared. There was absolute silence save for the soft thud of the drums.

The girl put her hand up to her throat and the cloak of black feathers came away from the front of her body and spread out into a five-foot black fan. She swirled it slowly behind her until it stood up like a peacock’s tail. She was naked except for a brief vee of black lace and a black sequin star in the centre of each breast and the thin black domino across her eyes. Her body was small, hard, bronze, beautiful. It was slightly oiled and glinted in the white light.

The audience was silent. The drums began to step up the tempo. The bass drum kept its beat dead on the timing of the human pulse.

The girl’s naked stomach started slowly to revolve in time with the rhythm. She swept the black feathers across and behind her again, and her hips started to grind in time with the bass drum. The upper part of her body was motionless. The black feathers swirled again, and now her feet were shifting and her shoulders. The drums beat louder. Each part of her body seemed to be keeping a different time. Her lips were bared slightly from her teeth. Her nostrils began to flare. Her eyes glinted hotly through the diamond slits. It was a sexy, pug-like face – chienne was the only word Bond could think of.

The drums thudded faster, a complexity of interlaced rhythms. The girl tossed the big fan off the floor, held her arms up above her head. Her whole body began to shiver. Her belly moved faster. Round and round, in and out. Her legs straddled. Her hips began to revolve in a wide circle. Suddenly she plucked the sequin star off her right breast and threw it into the audience. The first noise came from the spectators, a quiet growl. Then they were silent again. She plucked off the other star. Again the growl and then silence. The drums began to crash and roll. Sweat poured off the drummers. Their hands fluttered like grey flannel on the pale membranes. Their eyes were bulging, distant. Their heads were slightly bent to one side as if they were listening. They hardly glanced at the girl. The audience panted softly, liquid eyes bulging and rolling.

The sweat was shining all over her now. Her breasts and stomach glistened with it. She broke into great shuddering jerks. Her mouth opened and she screamed softly. Her hands snaked down to her sides and suddenly she had torn away the strip of lace. She threw it into the audience. There was nothing now but a single black G-string. The drums went into a hurricane of sexual rhythm. She screamed softly again and then, her arms stretched before her as a balance, she started to lower her body down to the floor and up again. Faster and faster. Bond could hear the audience panting and grunting like pigs at the trough. He felt his own hands gripping the tablecloth. His mouth was dry.

The audience began to shout at her. ‘Cmon, G-G. Take it away, Baby. Cmon. Grind Baby, grind.’

She sank to her knees and as the rhythm slowly died so she too went into a last series of juddering spasms, mewing softly.

The drums came down to a slow tom-tom beat and shuffle. The audience howled for her body. Harsh obscenities came from different corners of the room.

The MC came on to the floor. A spot went on him.

‘Okay, folks, okay.’ The sweat was pouring off his chin. He spread his arms in surrender.

‘Da G-G AGREES!’

There was a delighted howl from the audience. Now she would be quite naked. ‘Take it off, G-G. Show yoself Baby. Cmon, cmon.’

The drums growled and stuttered softly.

‘But, mah friends,’ yelled the MC, ‘she stipperlates – With da lights OUT!’

There was a frustrated groan from the audience. The whole room was plunged in darkness.

Must be an old gag, thought Bond to himself.

Suddenly all his senses were alert.

The howling of the mob was disappearing, rapidly. At the same time he felt cold air on his face. He felt as if he was sinking.

‘Hey,’ shouted Leiter. His voice was close but it sounded hollow.

Christ! thought Bond.

Something snapped shut above his head. He put his hand out behind him. It touched a moving wall a foot from his back.

‘Lights,’ said a voice, quietly.

At the same time both his arms were gripped. He was pressed down in his chair.

Opposite him, still at the table, sat Leiter, a huge negro grasping his elbows. They were in a tiny square cell. To right and left were two more negroes in plain clothes with guns trained on them.

There was the sharp hiss of a hydraulic garage lift and the table settled quietly to the floor. Bond glanced up. There was the faint join of a broad trap-door a few feet above their heads. No sound came through it.

One of the negroes grinned.

‘Take it easy, folks. Enjoy da ride?’

Leiter let out one single harsh obscenity. Bond relaxed his muscles, waiting.

‘Which is da Limey?’ asked the negro who had spoken. He seemed to be in charge. The pistol he held trained lazily on Bond’s heart was very fancy. There was a glint of mother-of-pearl between his black fingers on the stock and the long octagonal barrel was finely chased.

‘Dis one, Ah guess,’ said the negro who was holding Bond’s arm. ‘He’s got da scar.’

The negro’s grip on Bond’s arm was terrific. It was as if he had two fierce tourniquets applied above the elbows. His hands were beginning to go numb.

The man with the fancy gun came round the corner of the table. He shoved the muzzle of his gun into Bond’s stomach. The hammer was back.

‘You oughtn’t to miss at that range,’ said Bond.

‘Shaddap,’ said the negro. He frisked Bond expertly with his left hand – legs, thighs, back, sides. He dug out Bond’s gun and handed it to the other armed man.

‘Give dat to da Boss, Tee-Hee,’ he said. ‘Take da Limey up. Yuh go ’long wid em. Da other guy stays wid me.’

‘Yassuh,’ said the man called Tee-Hee, a paunchy negro in a chocolate shirt and lavender-coloured peg-top trousers.

Bond was hauled to his feet. He had one foot hooked under a leg of the table. He yanked hard. There was a crash of glass and silverware. At the same moment, Leiter kicked out backwards round the leg of his chair. There was a satisfactory ‘klonk’ as his heel caught his guard’s shin. Bond did the same but missed. There was a moment of chaos, but neither of the guards slackened his grip. Leiter’s guard picked him bodily out of the chair as if he had been a child, faced him to the wall and slammed him into it. It nearly smashed Leiter’s nose. The guard swung him round. Blood was streaming down over his mouth.

The two guns were still trained unwaveringly on them. It had been a futile effort, but for a split second they had regained the initiative and effaced the sudden shock of capture.

‘Don’ waste yo breff,’ said the negro who had been giving the orders. ‘Take da Limey away.’ He addressed Bond’s guard. ‘Mr Big’s waiten’.’ He turned to Leiter. ‘Yo kin tell yo fren’ goodbye,’ he said. ‘Yo is unlikely be seein’ yoselves agin.’

Bond smiled at Leiter. ‘Lucky we made a date for the police to meet us here at two,’ he said. ‘See you at the line-up.’

Leiter grinned back. His teeth were red with blood. ‘Commissioner Monahan’s going to be pleased with this bunch. Be seeing you.’

‘Crap,’ said the negro with conviction. ‘Get goin’.’

Bond’s guard whipped him round and shoved him against a section of the wall. It opened on a pivot into a long bare passage. The man called Tee-Hee pushed past them and led the way.

The door swung to behind them.

7 | MISTER BIG

Their footsteps echoed down the stone passage. At the end there was a door. They went through into another long passage lit by an occasional bare bulb in the roof. Another door and they found themselves in a large warehouse. Cases and bales were stacked in neat piles. There were runways for overhead cranes. From the markings on the crates it seemed to be a liquor store. They followed an aisle across to an iron door. The man called Tee-Hee rang a bell. There was absolute silence. Bond guessed they must have walked at least a block away from the night club.

There was a clang of bolts and the door opened. A negro in evening dress with a gun in his hand stepped aside and they went through into a carpeted hallway.

‘Yo kin go on in, Tee-Hee,’ said the man in evening dress.

Tee-Hee knocked on a door facing them, opened it and led the way through.

In a high-backed chair, behind an expensive desk, Mr Big sat looking quietly at them.

‘Good morning, Mister James Bond.’ The voice was deep and soft. ‘Sit down.’

Bond’s guard led him across the thick carpet to a low armchair in leather and tubular steel. He released Bond’s arms and Bond sat down and faced The Big Man across the wide desk.

It was a blessed relief to be rid of the two vice-like hands. All sensation had left Bond’s forearms. He let them hang beside him and welcomed the dull pain as the blood started to flow again.

Mr Big sat looking at him, his huge head resting against the back of the tall chair. He said nothing.

Bond at once realized that the photographs had conveyed nothing of this man, nothing of the power and the intellect which seemed to radiate from him, nothing of the over-size features.

It was a great football of a head, twice the normal size and very nearly round. The skin was grey-black, taut and shining like the face of a week-old corpse in the river. It was hairless, except for some grey-brown fluff above the ears. There were no eyebrows and no eyelashes and the eyes were extraordinarily far apart so that one could not focus on them both, but only on one at a time. Their gaze was very steady and penetrating. When they rested on something, they seemed to devour it, to encompass the whole of it. They bulged slightly and the irises were golden round black pupils which were now wide. They were animal eyes, not human, and they seemed to blaze.

The nose was wide without being particularly negroid. The nostrils did not gape at you. The lips were only slightly everted, but thick and dark. They opened only when the man spoke and then they opened wide and drew back from the teeth and the pale pink gums.

There were few wrinkles or creases on the face, but there were two deep clefts above the nose, the clefts of concentration. Above them the forehead bulged slightly before merging with the polished, hairless crown.

Curiously, there was nothing disproportionate about the monstrous head. It was carried on a wide, short neck supported by the shoulders of a giant. Bond knew from the records that he was six and a half foot tall and weighed twenty stone, and that little of it was fat. But the total impression was awe-inspiring, even terrifying, and Bond could imagine that so ghastly a misfit must have been bent since childhood on revenge against fate and against the world that hated because it feared him.

The Big Man was draped in a dinner jacket. There was a hint of vanity in the diamonds that blazed on his shirt-front and at his cuffs. His huge flat hands rested half-curled on the table in front of him. There were no signs of cigarettes or an ash-tray and the smell of the room was neutral. There was nothing on the desk save a large intercom with about twenty switches and, incongruously, a very small ivory riding crop with a long thin white lash.

Mr Big gazed with silent and deep concentration across the table at Bond.

After inspecting him carefully in return, Bond glanced round the room.

It was full of books, spacious and restful and very quiet, like the library of a millionaire.

There was one high window above Mr Big’s head but otherwise the walls were solid with bookshelves. Bond turned round in his chair. More bookshelves, packed with books. There was no sign of a door, but there might have been any number of doors faced with dummy books. The two negroes who had brought him to the room stood rather uneasily against the wall behind his chair. The whites of their eyes showed. They were not looking at Mr Big, but at a curious effigy which stood on a table in an open space of floor to the right, and slightly behind Mr Big.

Even with his slight knowledge of Voodoo, Bond recognized it at once from Leigh Fermor’s description.

A five-foot white wooden cross stood on a raised white pedestal. The arms of the cross were thrust into the sleeves of a dusty black frock-coat whose tails hung down behind the table towards the floor. Above the neck of the coat a battered bowler hat gaped at him, its crown pierced by the vertical bar of the cross. A few inches below the rim, round the neck of the cross, resting on the cross-bar, was a deep starched clergyman’s collar.

At the base of the white pedestal, on the table, lay an old pair of lemon-coloured gloves. A short malacca stick with a gold knob, its ferrule resting beside the gloves, rose against the left shoulder of the effigy. Also on the table was a battered black top hat.

This evil scarecrow gazed out across the room – God of the Cemeteries and Chief of the Legion of the Dead – Baron Samedi. Even to Bond it seemed to carry a dreadful gaping message.

Bond looked away, back to the great grey-black face across the desk.

Mr Big spoke.

‘I want you, Tee-Hee.’ His eyes shifted. ‘You can go, Miami.’

‘Yes, Sir, Boss,’ they both said together.

Bond heard a door open and close.

Silence fell again. At first, Mr Big’s eyes had been focused sharply on Bond. They had examined him minutely. Now, Bond noticed that though the eyes rested on him they had become slightly opaque. They gazed upon Bond without perception. Bond had the impression that the brain behind them was occupied elsewhere.

Bond was determined not to be disconcerted. Feeling had returned to his hands and he moved them towards his body to reach for his cigarettes and lighter.

Mr Big spoke.

‘You may smoke, Mister Bond. In case you have any other intentions you may care to lean forward and inspect the keyhole of the drawer in this desk facing your chair. I shall be ready for you in a moment.’

Bond leant forward. It was a large keyhole. In fact, Bond estimated, .45 of an inch in diameter. Fired, Bond supposed, by a foot-switch under the desk. What a bunch of tricks this man was. Puerile. Puerile? Perhaps, after all, not to be dismissed so easily. The tricks – the bomb, the disappearing table – had worked neatly, efficiently. They had not been just empty conceits, designed to impress. Again, there was nothing absurd about this gun. Rather painstaking, perhaps, but, he had to admit, technically sound.

He lit a cigarette and gratefully drew the smoke deep into his lungs. He did not feel particularly worried by his position. He refused to believe he would come to any harm. It would be a clumsy affair to have him disappear a couple of days after he arrived from England unless a very expert accident could be contrived. And Leiter would have to be disposed of at the same time. That would be altogether too much for their two Services and Mr Big must know it. But he was worried about Leiter in the hands of those clumsy black apes.

The Big Man’s lips rolled slowly back from his teeth.

‘I have not seen a member of the Secret Service for many years, Mister Bond. Not since the war. Your Service did well in the war. You have some able men. I learn from my friends that you are high up in your Service. You have a double-0 number, I believe – 007, if I remember right. The significance of that double-0 number, they tell me, is that you have had to kill a man in the course of some assignment. There cannot be many double-0 numbers in a Service which does not use assassination as a weapon. Whom have you been sent over to kill here, Mister Bond? Not me by any chance?’

The voice was soft and even, without expression. There was a slight mixture of accents, American and French, but the English was almost pedantically accurate, without a trace of slang.

Bond remained silent. He assumed that Moscow had signalled his description.

‘It is necessary for you to reply, Mister Bond. The fate of both of you depends upon your doing so. I have confidence in the sources of my information. I know much more than I have said. I shall easily detect a lie.’

Bond believed him. He chose a story he could support and which would cover the facts.

‘There are English gold coins circulating in America. Edward IV Rose Nobles,’ he said. ‘Some have been sold in Harlem. The American Treasury asked for assistance in tracing them since they must come from a British source. I came up to Harlem to see for myself, with a representative of the American Treasury, who I hope is now safely on his way back to his hotel.’

‘Mr Leiter is a representative of the Central Intelligence Agency, not of the Treasury,’ said Mr Big without emotion. ‘His position at this moment is extremely precarious.’

He paused and seemed to reflect. He looked past Bond.

‘Tee-Hee.’

‘Yassuh, Boss.’

‘Tie Mister Bond to his chair.’

Bond half rose to his feet.

‘Don’t move, Mister Bond,’ said the voice softly. ‘You have a bare chance of survival if you stay where you are.’

Bond looked at The Big Man, at the golden, impassive eyes.

He lowered himself back into his chair. Immediately a broad strap was passed round his body and buckled tight. Two short straps went round his wrists and tied them to the leather and metal arms. Two more went round his ankles. He could hurl himself and the chair to the floor, but otherwise he was powerless.

Mr Big pressed down a switch on the intercom.

‘Send in Miss Solitaire,’ he said and centred the switch again.

There was a moment’s pause and then a section of the bookcase to the right of the desk swung open.

One of the most beautiful women Bond had ever seen came slowly in and closed the door behind her. She stood just inside the room and stood looking at Bond, taking him in slowly inch by inch, from his head to his feet. When she had completed her detailed inspection, she turned to Mr Big.

‘Yes?’ she inquired flatly.

Mr Big had not moved his head. He addressed Bond.

‘This is an extraordinary woman, Mister Bond,’ he said in the same quiet soft voice, ‘and I am going to marry her because she is unique. I found her in a cabaret, in Haiti, where she was born. She was doing a telepathic act which I could not understand. I looked into it and I still could not understand. There was nothing to understand. It was telepathy.’

Mr Big paused.

‘I tell you this to warn you. She is my inquisitor. Torture is messy and inconclusive. People tell you what will ease the pain. With this girl it is not necessary to use clumsy methods. She can divine the truth in people. That is why she is to be my wife. She is too valuable to remain at liberty. And,’ he continued blandly, ‘it will be interesting to see our children.’

Mr Big turned towards her and gazed at her impassively.

‘For the time being she is difficult. She will have nothing to do with men. That is why, in Haiti, she was called “Solitaire”.’

‘Draw up a chair,’ he said quietly to her. ‘Tell me if this man lies. Keep clear of the gun,’ he added.

The girl said nothing but took a chair similar to Bond’s from beside the wall and pushed it towards him. She sat down almost touching his right knee. She looked into his eyes.

Her face was pale, with the pallor of white families that have lived long in the tropics. But it contained no trace of the usual exhaustion which the tropics impart to the skin and hair. The eyes were blue, alight and disdainful, but, as they gazed into his with a touch of humour, he realized they contained some message for him personally. It quickly vanished as his own eyes answered. Her hair was blue-black and fell heavily to her shoulders. She had high cheekbones and a wide, sensual mouth which held a hint of cruelty. Her jawline was delicate and finely cut. It showed decision and an iron will which were repeated in the straight, pointed nose. Part of the beauty of the face lay in its lack of compromise. It was a face born to command. The face of the daughter of a French Colonial slave-owner.

She wore a long evening dress of heavy white matt silk whose classical line was broken by the deep folds which fell from her shoulders and revealed the upper half of her breasts. She wore diamond earrings, square-cut in broken bands, and a thin diamond bracelet on her left wrist. She wore no rings. Her nails were short and without enamel.