Текст книги "The James Bond Anthology"

Автор книги: Ian Fleming

4 | DIKKO ON THE GINZA

The huge right fist crashed into the left palm with the noise of a .45 pistol shot. The great square face of the Australian turned almost purple and the veins stood out on the grizzled temples. With controlled violence, but almost under his breath, he intoned savagely:

I bludge, Thou bludgest, He bludges, We bludge, You bludge, They all bludge.He reached under the low table and then seemed to think better of it and moved his hand to the glass of saké, picked it up and poured it down his throat without a swallow.

Bond said mildly, ‘Take it easy, Dikko. What’s bitten you? And what does this vulgar-sounding colonial expression mean?’

Richard Lovelace Henderson, of Her Majesty’s Australian Diplomatic Corps, looked belligerently round the small crowded bar in a by-street off the Ginza and said out of the corner of his large and usually cheerful mouth that was now turned down in bitterness and anger, ‘You stupid pommy bastard, we’ve been miked! That bludger Tanaka’s miked us! Here, under the table! See the little wire down the leg? And see that wingy over at the bar? Chap with one arm looking bloody respectable in his blue suit and black tie? That’s one of Tiger’s men. I can smell ’em by now. They’ve been tailing me off and on for ten years. Tiger dresses ’em all like little C.I.A. gentlemen. You watch out for any Jap who’s drinking Western and wearing that rig. All Tiger’s men.’ He grumbled, ‘Damn good mind to go over and call the bastard.’

Bond said, ‘Well, if we’re being miked, all this’ll make sweet reading for Mr Tanaka tomorrow morning.’

‘What the hell,’ said Dikko Henderson resignedly. ‘The old bastard knows what I think of him. Now he’ll just have it in writing. Teach him to stop leaning on me. And my friends,’ he added, with a blistering glance at Bond. ‘It’s really you he wants to size up. And I don’t mind if he hears me saying so. Bludger? Well, hear me now, Tiger! This is the great Australian insult. You can use it anyways.’ He raised his voice. ‘But in general it means a worthless pervert, ponce, scoundrel, liar, traitor and rogue – with no redeeming feature. And I hope your stewed seaweed sticks in your gullet at breakfast tomorrow when you know what I think of you.’

Bond laughed. The torrent of powerful swear-words had started its ceaseless flow the day before at the airport – Haneda, ‘the field of wings’. It had taken Bond nearly an hour to extract his single suitcase from the customs area, and he had emerged fuming into the central hall only to be jostled and pushed aside by an excited crowd of young Japanese bearing paper banners that said ‘International Laundry Convention’. Bond was exhausted from his flight. He let out one single four-letter expletive.

Behind him a big voice repeated the same word and added some more. ‘That’s my boy! That’s the right way to greet the East! You’ll be needing all those words and more before you’re through with the area.’

Bond had turned. The huge man in the rumpled grey suit thrust out a hand as big as a small ham. ‘Glad to meet you. I’m Henderson. As you were the only pommy on the plane, I guess you’re Bond. Here. Give me that bag. Got a car outside and the sooner we get away from this blankety blank madhouse the better.’

Henderson looked like a middle-aged prize fighter who has retired and taken to the bottle. His thin suit bulged with muscle round the arms and shoulders and with fat round the waist. He had a craggy, sympathetic face, rather stony blue eyes, and a badly broken nose. He was sweating freely (Bond was to find that he was always sweating), and as he barged his way through the crowd, using Bond’s suitcase as a battering ram, he extracted a rumpled square of terry cloth from his trouser-pocket and wiped it round his neck and face. The crowd parted unresentfully to let the giant through, and Bond followed in his wake to a smart Toyopet saloon waiting in a no-parking area. The chauffeur got out and bowed. Henderson fired a torrent of instructions at him in fluent Japanese and followed Bond into the back seat, settling himself with a grunt. ‘Taking you to your hotel first – the Okura, latest of the Western ones. American tourist got murdered at the Royal Oriental the other day and we don’t want to lose you all that soon. Then we’ll do a bit of serious drinking. Had some dinner?’

‘About six of them, as far as I can remember. J.A.L. certainly takes good care of your stomach.’

‘Why did you choose the willow-pattern route? How was the old ruptured duck?’

‘They told me the bird was a crane. Very dainty. But efficient. Thought I might as well practise being inscrutable before plunging into all this.’ Bond waved at the cluttered shambles of the Tokyo suburbs through which they were tearing at what seemed to Bond a suicidal speed. ‘Doesn’t look the most attractive city in the world. And why are we driving on the left?’

‘God knows,’ said Henderson moodily. ‘The bloody Japs do everything the wrong way round. Read the old instruction books wrong, I daresay. Light switches go up instead of down. Taps turn to the left. Door handles likewise. Why, they even race their horses clockwise instead of anti-clockwise like civilized people. As for Tokyo, it’s bloody awful. It’s either too hot or too cold or pouring with rain. And there’s an earthquake about every day. But don’t worry about them. They just make you feel slightly drunk. The typhoons are worse. If one starts to blow, go into the stoutest bar you can see and get drunk. But the first ten years are the worst. It’s got its point when you know your way around. Bloody expensive if you live Western, but I stick to the back alleys and do all right. Really quite exhilarating. Got to know the lingo though, and when to bow and take off your shoes and so on. You’ll have to get the basic routines straight pretty quickly if you’re going to make any headway with the people you’ve come to see. Underneath the stiff collars and striped pants in the government departments, there’s still plenty of the old samurai tucked away. I laugh at them for it, and they laugh back because they’ve got to know my line of patter. But that doesn’t mean I don’t bow from the waist when I know it’s expected of me and when I want something. You’ll get the hang of it all right.’ Henderson fired some Japanese at the driver who had been glancing frequently in his driving mirror. The driver laughed and replied cheerfully. ‘Thought so,’ said Henderson. ‘We’ve got ourselves a tail. Typical of old Tiger. I told him you were staying at the Okura, but he wants to make sure for himself. Don’t worry. It’s just part of his crafty ways. If you find one of his men breathing down your neck in bed tonight, or a girl if you’re lucky, just talk to them politely and they’ll bow and hiss themselves out.’

But a solitary sleep had followed the serious drinking in the Bamboo Bar of the Okura, and the next day had been spent doing the sights and getting some cards printed that described Bond as Second Secretary in the Cultural Department of the Australian Embassy. ‘They know that’s our intelligence side,’ said Henderson, ‘and they know I’m the head of it and you’re my temporary assistant, so why not spell it out for them?’ And that evening they had gone for more serious drinking to Henderson’s favourite bar, Melody’s, off the Ginza, where everybody called Henderson ‘Dikko’ or ‘Dikko-san’, and where they were ushered respectfully to the quiet corner table that appeared to be his Stammtisch.

And now Henderson reached under the table and, with a powerful wrench, pulled out the wires and left them hanging. ‘I’ll give that black bastard Melody hell for this when I get around to it,’ he said belligerently. ‘And to think of all I’ve done for the dingo bastard! Used to be a favourite pub of the English Colony and the Press Club layabouts. Had a good restaurant attached to it. That’s gone now. The Eyteye cook trod on the cat and spilled the soup and he picked up the cat and threw it into the cooking stove. Of course that got around pretty quick, and all the animal-lovers and sanctimonious bastards got together and tried to have Melody’s licence taken away. I managed to put in squeeze in the right quarter and saved him, but everyone quit his restaurant and he had to close it. I’m the only regular who’s stuck to him. And now he goes and does this to me! Oh well, he’ll have had the squeeze put on him, I suppose. Anyway, that’s the end of the tape so far as T.T.’s concerned. I’ll give him hell too. He ought to have learned by now that me and my friends don’t want to assassinate the Emperor or blow up the Diet or something.’ Dikko glared around him as if he proposed to do both those things. ‘Now then, James, to business. I’ve fixed up for you to meet Tiger tomorrow morning at eleven. I’ll pick you up and take you there. “The Bureau of All-Asian Folkways.” I won’t describe it to you. It’d spoil it. Now, I don’t really know what you’re here for. Spate of top secret cables from Melbourne. To be deciphered by yours truly in person. Thanks very much! And my Ambassador, Jim Saunderson, good bloke, says he doesn’t want to know anything about it. Thinks it’d be even better if he didn’t meet you at all. Okay with you? No offence, but he’s a wise guy and likes to keep his hands clean. And I don’t want to know anything about your job either. That way, you’re the only one who gets the powdered bamboo in his coffee. But I gather you want to get some high-powered gen out of Tiger without the C.I.A. knowing anything about it. Right? Well that’s going to be a dicey business. Tiger’s a career man with a career mind. Although, on the surface, he’s a hundred per cent demokorasu, he’s a deep one – very deep indeed. The American occupation and the American influence here look like a very solid basis for a total American-Japanese alliance. But once a Jap, always a Jap. It’s the same with all the other great nations – Chinese, Russian, German, English. It’s their bones that matter, not their lying faces. And all those races have got tremendous bones. Compared with the bones, the smiles or scowls don’t mean a thing. And time means nothing for them either. Ten years is the blink of a star for the big ones. Get me? So Tiger, and his superiors, who, I suppose, are the Diet and, in the end, the Emperor, will look at your proposition principally from two angles. Is it immediately desirable, today? Or is it a long-term investment? Something that may pay off for the country in ten, twenty years. And, if I were you, I’d stick to that spiel – the long-term talk. These people, people like Tiger, who’s an absolutely top man in Japan, don’t think in terms of days or months or years. They think in terms of centuries. Quite right, when you come to think of it.’

Dikko Henderson made a wide gesture with his left hand. Bond decided that Dikko was getting cheerfully tight. He had found a Palomar pony to run with. They must be rare enough in Tokyo. They were both past the eighth flask of saké, but Dikko had also laid a foundation of Suntory whisky in the Okura while he’d been waiting for Bond to write out an innocuous cable to Melbourne with the prefix ‘Informationwise’, which meant that it was for Mary Goodnight, to announce his arrival and give his current address. But it was all right with Bond that Dikko should be getting plastered. He would talk better and looser and, in the end, wiser that way. And Bond wanted to pick his brains.

Bond said, ‘But what sort of a chap is this Tanaka? Is he your enemy or your friend?’

‘Both. More of a friend probably. At least I’d guess so. I amuse him. His C.I.A. pals don’t. He loosens up with me. We’ve got things in common. We share a pleasure in the delights of samsara – wine and women. He’s a great cocks-man. I also have ambitions in that direction. I’ve managed to keep him out of two marriages. Trouble with Tiger is he always wants to marry ’em. He’s paying cock-tax, that’s alimony in the Australian vernacular, to three already. So he’s acquired an ON with regard to me. That’s an obligation – lmost as important in the Japanese way of life as “face”. When you have an ON, you’re not very happy until you’ve discharged it honourably, if you’ll pardon the bad pun. And if a man makes you a present of a salmon, you mustn’t repay him with a shrimp. It’s got to be with an equally large salmon – larger if possible, so that then you’ve jumped the man, and now he has an ON with regard to you, and you’re quids in morally, socially and spiritually – and the last one’s the most important. Well now. Tiger’s ON towards me is a very powerful one, very difficult to discharge. He’s paid little slices of it off with various intelligence dope. He’s paid off another big slice by accepting your presence here and giving you an interview so soon after your arrival. If you’d been an ordinary supplicant, it might have taken you weeks. He’d have given you a fat dose of shikiri-naoshi – that’s making you wait, giving you the great stone face. The sumo wrestlers use it in the ring to make an opponent look and feel small in front of the audience. Got it? So you start with that in your favour. He would be predisposed to do what you want because that would remove all his ON towards me and, by his accounting, stick a whole packet of ON on my back towards him. But it’s not so simple as that. All Japanese have permanent ON towards their superiors, the Emperor, their ancestors and the Japanese gods. This they can only discharge by doing “the right thing”. Not easy, you’ll say. Because how can you know what the higher echelon thinks is the right thing? Well, you get out of that by doing what the bottom of the ladder thinks right – i.e. your immediate superiors. That passes the buck, psychologically, on to the Emperor, and he’s got to make his peace with ancestors and gods. But that’s all right with him, because he embodies all the echelons above him, so he can get on with dissecting fish, which is his hobby, with a clear conscience. Got it? It’s not really as mysterious as it sounds. Much the same routine as operates in big corporations, like I.C.I. or Shell, or in the Services, except with them the ladder stops at the Board of Directors or the Chiefs of Staff. It’s easier that way. You don’t have to involve the Almighty and your great-grandfather in a decision to cut the price of aspirin by a penny a bottle.’

‘It doesn’t sound very demokorasu to me.’

‘Of course it isn’t, you dumb bastard. For God’s sake, get it into your head that the Japanese are a separate human species. They’ve only been operating as a civilized people, in the debased sense we talk about it in the West, for fifty, at the most a hundred years. Scratch a Russian and you’ll find a Tartar. Scratch a Japanese and you’ll find a samurai–or what he thinks is a samurai. Most of this samurai stuff is a myth, like the Wild West bunk the Americans are brought up on, or your knights in shining armour at King Arthur’s court. Just because people play baseball and wear bowler hats doesn’t mean they’re quote civilized unquote. Just to show you I’m getting rather tight – not drunk, mark you – I’d add that the U.N. are going to reap the father and mother of a whirlwind by quote liberating unquote the colonial peoples. Give ’em a thousand years, yes. But give ’em ten, no. You’re only taking away their blow-pipes and giving them machine guns. Just you wait for the first one to start crying to high heaven for nuclear fission. Because they must have quote parity unquote with the lousy colonial powers. I’ll give you ten years for that to happen, my friend. And when it does, I’ll dig myself a deep hole in the ground and sit in it.’

Bond laughed. ‘That also doesn’t sound very demokorasu.’

‘“I fornicate upon thy demokorasu” as brother Hemingway would have said. I stand for government by an elite.’ Dikko Henderson downed his ninth pint of saké.

‘And voting graded by each individual’s rating in that elite. And one tenth of a vote for my government if you don’t agree with me!’

‘For God’s sake, Dikko! How in hell did we get on to politics? Let’s go and get some food. I’ll agree there’s a certain aboriginal common sense in what you say ...’

‘Don’t talk to me about the aborigines! What in hell do you think you know about the aborigines? Do you know that in my country there’s a move afoot, not afoot, at full gallop, to give the aborigines the vote? You pommy poofter. You give me any more of that liberal crap and I’ll have your balls for a bow-tie.’

Bond said mildly, ‘What’s a poofter?’

‘What you’d call a pansy. No,’ Dikko Henderson got to his feet and fired a string of what sounded like lucid Japanese at the man behind the bar, ‘before I condemn you utterly, we’ll go and eat eels – place where you can get a serious bottle of plonk to match. Then we’ll go to “The House of Total Delight”. After that, I will give you my honest verdict, honestly come by.’

Bond said, ‘You’re a no-good kangaroo bum, Dikko. But I like eels. As long as they’re not jellied. I’ll pay for them and for the later relaxation. You pay for the rice wine and the plonk, whatever that is. Take it easy. The wingy at the bar has an appraising look.’

‘I come to appraise Mr Richard Lovelace Henderson, not to bury him.’ Dikko Henderson produced a wad of thousand yen notes and began counting them out for the waiter. ‘Not yet, that is.’ He walked, with careful majesty, up to the bar and addressed himself to the large Negro in a plum-coloured coat behind it. ‘Melody, be ashamed of yourself!’ Then he led the way, with massive dignity, out of the bar.

5 | MAGIC 44

Dikko Henderson came to fetch Bond at ten o’clock next morning. He was considerably overhung. The hard blue eyes were veined with blood and he made straight for the Bamboo Bar and ordered himself a double brandy and ginger ale. Bond said mildly, ‘You shouldn’t have poured all that saké on top of the Suntory. I can’t believe Japanese whisky makes a good foundation for anything.’

‘You’ve got something there, sport. I’ve got myself a proper futsukayoi – honourable hangover. Mouth like a vulture’s crutch. Soon as we got home from that lousy cat house, I had to go for the big spit. But you’re wrong about Suntory. It’s a good enough brew. Stick to the cheapest, the White Label, at around fifteen bob a bottle. There are two smarter brands, but the cheap one’s the best. Went up to the distillery some whiles ago and met one of the family. Told me an interesting thing about whisky. He said you can only make good whisky where you can take good photographs. Ever heard that one? Said it was something to do with the effect of clear light on the alcohol. But did I talk a lot of crap last night? Or did you? Seem to recollect that one of us did.’

‘You only gave me hell about the state of the world and called me a poofter. But you were quite friendly about it. No offence given or taken.’

‘Oh, Christ!’ Dikko Henderson gloomily pushed a hand through his tough, grizzled hair. ‘But I didn’t hit anyone?’

‘Only that girl you slapped so hard on the bottom that she fell down.’

‘Oh that!’ said Dikko Henderson with relief. ‘That was just a love-pat. What’s a girl’s bottom for, anyway? And so far as I recall they all screamed with laughter. Including her. Right? How did you make out with yours by the way? She looked pretty enthusiastic’

‘She was.’

‘Good show.’ He swallowed the remains of his drink and got to his feet. ‘Come on, bud. Let’s go. Wouldn’t do to keep Tiger waiting. I once did and he wouldn’t speak to me for a week.’

It was a typical Tokyo day in late summer – hot, sticky and grey – the air full of fine dust from the endless demolition and reconstruction work. They drove for half an hour towards Yokohama and pulled up outside a dull grey building which announced itself in large letters to be ‘The Bureau of All-Asian Folkways’. There was a busy traffic of Japanese scurrying in and out through the bogusly important-looking entrance, but no one glanced at Dikko and Bond, and they were not asked their business as Dikko led the way through an entrance hall where there were books and postcards on sale as if the place were some kind of museum. Dikko made for a doorway marked ‘Co-ordination Department’ and there was a long corridor with open rooms on both sides. The rooms were full of studious-looking young men at desks. There were large wall maps with coloured pins dotted across them, and endless shelves of books. A door marked ‘International Relations’ gave on to another corridor, this time lined with closed doors which had people’s names on them in English and Japanese. A sharp right turn took them through the ‘Visual Presentation Bureau’ with more closed doors, and on to ‘Documentation’, a large hall-shaped library with more people bent over desks. Here, for the first time, they were scrutinized by a man at a desk near the entrance. He rose to his feet and bowed wordlessly. As they walked on Dikko said quietly, ‘This is where the cover tapers off. Up till now, all those people really were researching Asian Folkways. But these here are part of Tiger’s outside staff, doing more or less classified work. Sort of archivists. This is where we’d be politely turned back if we’d lost our way.’ Behind a final wall of bookshelves that stretched out into the room a small door was concealed. It was marked ‘Proposed Extension to Documentation Department. Danger! Construction work in progress’. From behind it came the sound of drills, a circular saw cutting through the wood and other building noises. Dikko walked through the door into a totally empty room with a highly-polished wood floor. There was no sign of construction work. Dikko laughed at Bond’s surprise. He gestured towards a large metal box fitted to the back of the door through which they had come. ‘Tape recorder,’ he said. ‘Clever gimmick. Sounds just like the real thing. And this’–he pointed to the stretch of bare floor ahead–‘is what the Japanese call a “nightingale floor”. Relic of the old days when people wanted to be warned of intruders. Serves the same purpose here. Imagine trying to get across here without being heard.’ They set off, and immediately the cunningly sprung boards gave out penetrating squeaks and groans. In a small facing door, a spy-hole slid open and one large eye surveyed them. The door opened to reveal a stocky man in plain clothes who had been sitting at a small deal table reading a book. It was a tiny box-like room that seemed to have no other exit. The man bowed. Dikko said some phrases containing the words ‘Tanaka-san’. The man bowed again. Dikko turned to Bond. ‘You’re on your own now. Be in it, champ! Tiger’ll send you back to your hotel. See you.’

Bond said, ‘Tell Mother I died game,’ and walked into the little box and the door was closed behind him. There was a row of buttons by the desk and the guard pressed one of them. There came a barely perceptible whine and Bond got the impression of descent. So the room was a lift. What a box of tricks the formidable Tiger had erected as a screen for himself! The authentic Eastern nest of boxes. What next?

The descent continued for some time. When it stopped, the guard opened the door and Bond stepped out and stood stock still. He was standing on the platform of an underground station! There it all was: the red and green signals over the two yawning tunnels, the conventional white tiles on the walls and the curved roof – even an empty cigarette kiosk let into the wall beside him! A man had come out of this. He now said in good English, ‘Please to follow me, Commander,’ and led the way through an arch marked ‘Exit’. But here all the floor space of the hall that would one day lead to the moving stairways was occupied by trim prefabricated offices on both sides of a wide corridor. Bond was led into the first of these which revealed itself as a waiting-room and outer office. A male secretary rose from his typewriter, bowed and went through a communicating door. He immediately reappeared, bowed again and held the door open. ‘Please to come this way, Commander.’

Bond went through and the door was softly closed behind him. The big square figure that Dikko had described to him came forward across the handsome red carpet and held out a hand that was hard and dry. ‘My dear Commander. Good morning. It is a great pleasure to meet you.’ The wide, gold-toothed smile signalled welcome. The eyes glittered between long dark lashes that were almost feminine. ‘Come and sit down. How do you like my offices? Rather different from your own Chief’s, no doubt. But the new underground will take another ten years to complete and there is little office space in Tokyo. It crossed my mind to make use of this disused station. It is quiet. It is private. It is also cool. I shall be sorry when the trains are required to run and we shall have to move out.’

Bond took the proffered chair across the empty desk from Tanaka. ‘It’s a brilliant idea. And I enjoyed the Folkways above our heads. Are there really so many people in the world interested in Folkways?’

Tiger Tanaka shrugged. ‘What does it matter? The literature is given away free. I have never asked the Director who reads it. Americans, I expect, and Germans. Perhaps some Swiss. The serious-minded can always be found for such stuff. It is an expensive conceit, of course. But fortunately the expense is not carried by the Ministry of Internal Affairs with whom I am concerned. Down here, we have to count our pennies. I suppose it is the same with your own budget.’

Bond assumed that this man would know the published facts of the Secret Service Vote. He said, ‘Under ten million pounds a year doesn’t go far when there is the whole world to cover.’

The teeth glistened under the neon strip lighting. ‘At least for the last ten years you have saved money by closing down your activities in this part of the world.’

‘Yes. We rely on the C.I.A. to do our work here for us. They are most efficient and helpful.’

‘As much so under McCone as under Dulles?’

The old fox! ‘Nearly so. Nowadays they are even more inclined to regard the Pacific as their own back garden.’

‘From which you wish to borrow the mowing machine. Without them knowing.’ Tiger’s smile was even more tigerish.

Bond had to laugh. The wily devil had certainly been putting two and two together. When Bond laughed, Tiger also laughed, but carefully. Bond said, ‘We had a man called Captain Cook and various others who discovered much of this garden. Australia and New Zealand are two very great countries. You must admit that our interest in this half of the world is perfectly legitimate.’

‘My dear Commander. You were lucky that we struck at Pearl Harbour rather than at Australia. Can you doubt that we would have occupied that country and New Zealand if we had done otherwise? These are big and important land spaces, insufficiently developed. You could not have defended them. The Americans would not have. If our policy had been different, we would now own half the British Commonwealth. Personally, I have never understood the strategy behind Pearl Harbour. Did we wish to conquer America? The supply lines were too long. But Australia and New Zealand were ripe for the plucking.’ He pushed forward a large box of cigarettes. ‘Do you smoke? These are Shinsei. It is an acceptable brand.’

James Bond was running out of his Morland specials. He would soon have to start on the local stuff. He also had to collect his thoughts. This was rather like being involved in a Summit meeting between the United Kingdom and Japan. He felt way out of his depth. He took a cigarette and lit it. It burned rapidly with something of the effect of a slow-burning firework. It had a vague taste of American blends, but it was good and sharp on the palate and lungs like 90 proof spirits. He let the smoke out in a quiet hiss and smiled. ‘Mr Tanaka, these are matters for political historians. I am concerned with much lower matters. And matters concerning the future rather than the past.’

‘I quite understand, Commander.’ Tiger Tanaka was obviously displeased that his game of generalities had been dodged by Bond. ‘But we have a saying “Speak of next year and the devil laughs”. The future is inscrutable. But tell me, what are your impressions of Japan? You have been enjoying yourself?’

‘I imagine that one always enjoys oneself with Dikko Henderson.’

‘Yes, he is a man who lives as if he were going to die tomorrow. This is a correct way to live. He is a good friend of mine. I greatly enjoy his company. We have certain tastes in common.’

Bond said ironically, ‘Folkways?’

‘Exactly.’

‘He has a great affection for you. I do not know him well, but I suspect that he is a lonely man. It is an unfortunate combination to be both lonely and intelligent. Wouldn’t it be a good thing for him to marry a Japanese girl and settle down? Couldn’t you find him one?’ Bond was pleased that the conversation had descended to personalities. He sensed that he was on the right track. At least on a better track than this talk about power politics. But there would come a bad moment when he would have to get down to business. He didn’t care for the prospect.

As if he had sensed this, Tiger Tanaka said, ‘I have arranged for our friend to meet many Japanese girls. The result in every case has been negative, or, at the best, fleeting. But tell me, Commander. We have not met here to discuss Mr Henderson’s private life. In what respect can I be of service to you? Is it the lawn mower?’

Bond smiled. ‘It is. The manufacturers’ trade mark for this particular implement is MAGIC 44.’

‘Ah yes. A most valuable implement of many uses. I can understand that your country would wish to have the services of this implement. A case in point is an example of its capabilities which came into my hands only this morning.’ Tiger Tanaka opened a drawer in his desk and extracted a file. It was a pale green file stamped in a square box with the word gokuhi in black Japanese and Roman characters. Bond assumed this to be the equivalent of Top Secret. He put this to Mr Tanaka who confirmed it. Mr Tanaka opened the file and extracted two sheets of yellow paper. Bond could see that one was covered with Japanese ideograms and that the other had perhaps fifty lines of typewriting. Mr Tanaka slipped the typewritten one across the desk. He said, ‘May I beg you on oath not to reveal to anyone what you are about to read?’