Текст книги "The James Bond Anthology"

Автор книги: Ian Fleming

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 18 (всего у книги 190 страниц)

11 | ALLUMEUSE

The crack train thundered on through the bright afternoon towards the south. They left Pennsylvania behind, and Maryland. There came a long halt at Washington, where Bond heard through his dreams the measured clang of the warning bells on the shunting engines and the soft think-speak of the public-address system on the station. Then on into Virginia. Here the air was already softer and the dusk, only five hours away from the bright frosty breath of New York, smelled almost of spring.

An occasional group of negroes, walking home from the fields, would hear the distant rumble on the silent sighing silver rails and one would pull out his watch and consult it and announce, ‘Hyah comes da Phantom. Six o’clock. Guess ma watch is right on time.’ ‘Sho nuff,’ one of the others would say as the great beat of the Diesels came nearer and the lighted coaches streaked past and on towards North Carolina.

They awoke around seven to the hasty ting of a grade-crossing alarm bell as the big train nosed its way out of the fields into the suburbs of Raleigh. Bond pulled the wedges from under the doors before he turned on the lights and rang for the attendant.

He ordered dry Martinis and when the two little ‘personalized’ bottles appeared with the glasses and the ice they seemed so inadequate that he at once ordered four more.

They argued over the menu. The fish was described as being ‘Made From Flaky Tender Boneless Filets’ and the chicken as ‘Delicious French Fried to a Golden Brown, Served Disjointed’.

‘Eyewash,’ said Bond, and they finally ordered scrambled eggs and bacon and sausages, a salad, and some of the domestic Camembert that is one of the most welcome surprises on American menus.

It was nine o’clock when Baldwin came to clear the dishes away. He asked if there was anything else they wanted.

Bond had been thinking. ‘What time do we get into Jacksonville?’ he asked.

‘Aroun’ five ’n the morning, Suh.’

‘Is there a subway on the platform?’

‘Yassuh. Dis cyar stops right alongside.’

‘Could you have the door open and the steps down pretty quick?’

The negro smiled. ‘Yassuh. Ah kin take good care of that.’

Bond slipped him a ten-dollar bill. ‘Just in case I miss you when we arrive in St Petersburg,’ he said.

The negro grinned. ‘Ah greatly preeshiate yo kindness, Suh. Good night, Suh. Good night, Mam.’

He went out and closed the door. Bond got up and pushed the wedges firmly under the two doors.

‘I see,’ said Solitaire. ‘So it’s like that.’

‘Yes,’ said Bond. ‘I’m afraid so.’ He told her of the warning he had had from Baldwin.

‘I’m not surprised,’ said the girl when he had finished. ‘They must have seen you coming into the station. He’s got a whole team of spies called “The Eyes“ and when they’re put out on a job it’s almost impossible to get by them. I wonder who he’s got on the train. You can be certain it’s a negro, either a Pullman attendant or someone in the diner. He can make these people do absolutely anything he likes.’

‘So it seems,’ said Bond. ‘But how does it work? What’s he got on them?’

She looked out of the window into the tunnel of darkness through which the lighted train was burning its thundering path. Then she looked back across the table into the cool wide grey-blue eyes of the English agent. She thought: how can one explain to someone with that certainty of spirit, with that background of common sense, brought up with clothes and shoes among the warm houses and the lighted streets? How can one explain to someone who hasn’t lived close to the secret heart of the tropics, at the mercy of their anger and stealth and poison; who hasn’t experienced the mystery of the drums, seen the quick workings of magic and the mortal dread it inspires? What can he know of catalepsy, and thought-transference and the sixth sense of fish, of birds, of negroes; the deadly meaning of a white chicken’s feather, a crossed stick in the road, a little leather bag of bones and herbs? What of Mialism, of shadow-taking, of the death by swelling and the death by wasting?

She shivered and a whole host of dark memories clustered round her. Above all, she remembered that first time in the Houmfor where her black nurse had once taken her as a child. ‘It do yuh no harm, Missy. Dis powerful good juju. Care fe yuh res ’f yo life.’ And the disgusting old man and the filthy drink he had given her. How her nurse had held her jaws open until she had drunk the last drop and how she had lain awake screaming every night for a week. And how her nurse had been worried and then suddenly she had slept all right until, weeks later, shifting on her pillow, she had felt something hard and had dug it out from the pillow-case, a dirty little packet of muck. She had thrown it out of the window, but in the morning she could not find it. She had continued to sleep well and she knew it must have been found by the nurse and secreted somewhere under the floorboards.

Years later, she had found out about the Voodoo drink – a concoction of rum, gunpowder, grave-dirt and human blood. She almost retched as the taste came back to her mouth.

What could this man know of these things or of her half-belief in them?

She looked up and found Bond’s eyes fixed quizzically on her.

‘You’re thinking I shan’t understand,’ he said. ‘And you’re right up to a point. But I know what fear can do to people and I know that fear can be caused by many things. I’ve read most of the books on Voodoo and I believe that it works. I don’t think it would work on me because I stopped being afraid of the dark when I was a child and I’m not a good subject for suggestion or hypnotism. But I know the jargon and you needn’t think I shall laugh at it. The scientists and doctors who wrote the books don’t laugh at it.’

Solitaire smiled. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘Then all I need tell you is that they believe The Big Man is the Zombie of Baron Samedi. Zombies are bad enough by themselves. They’re animated corpses that have been made to rise from the dead and obey the commands of the person who controls them. Baron Samedi is the most dreadful spirit in the whole of Voodooism. He is the spirit of darkness and death. So for Baron Samedi to be in control of his own Zombie is a very dreadful conception. You know what Mr Big looks like. He is huge and grey and he has great psychic power. It is not difficult for a negro to believe that he is a Zombie and a very bad one at that. The step to Baron Samedi is simple. Mr Big encourages the idea by having the Baron’s fetish at his elbow. You saw it in his room.’

She paused. She went on quickly, almost breathlessly: ‘And I can tell you that it works and that there’s hardly a negro who has seen him and heard the story who doesn’t believe it and who doesn’t regard him with complete and absolute dread. And they are right,’ she added. ‘And you would say so too if you knew the way he deals with those who haven’t obeyed him completely, the way they are tortured and killed.’

‘Where does Moscow come in?’ asked Bond. ‘Is it true he’s an agent of SMERSH?’

‘I don’t know what SMERSH is,’ said the girl, ‘but I know he works for Russia, at least I’ve heard him talking Russian to people who come from time to time. Occasionally he’s had me in to that room and asked me afterwards what I thought of his visitors. Generally it seemed to me they were telling the truth although I couldn’t understand what they said. But don’t forget I’ve only known him for a year and he’s fantastically secretive. If Moscow does use him they’ve got hold of one of the most powerful men in America. He can find out almost anything he wants to and if he doesn’t get what he wants somebody gets killed.’

‘Why doesn’t someone kill him?’ asked Bond.

‘You can’t kill him,’ she said. ‘He’s already dead. He’s a Zombie.’

‘Yes, I see,’ said Bond slowly. ‘It’s quite an impressive arrangement. Would you try?’

She looked out of the window, then back at him.

‘As a last resort,’ she admitted unwillingly. ‘But don’t forget I come from Haiti. My brain tells me I could kill him, but…’ She made a helpless gesture with her hands. ‘…my instinct tells me I couldn’t.’

She smiled at him docilely. ‘You must think me a hopeless fool,’ she said.

Bond reflected. ‘Not after reading all those books,’ he admitted. He put his hand across the table and covered hers with it. ‘When the time comes,’ he said, smiling, ‘I’ll cut a cross in my bullet. That used to work in the old days.’

She looked thoughtful. ‘I believe that if anybody can do it, you can,’ she said. ‘You hit him hard last night in exchange for what he did to you.’ She took his hand in hers and pressed it. ‘Now tell me what I must do.’

‘Bed,’ said Bond. He looked at his watch. It was ten o’clock. ‘Might as well get as much sleep as we can. We’ll slip off the train at Jacksonville and chance being spotted. Find another way down to the Coast.’

They got up. They stood facing each other in the swaying train.

Suddenly Bond reached out and took her in his right arm. Her arms went round his neck and they kissed passionately. He pressed her up against the swaying wall and held her there. She took his face between her two hands and held it away, panting. Her eyes were bright and hot. Then she brought his lips against hers again and kissed him long and lasciviously, as if she was the man and he the woman.

Bond cursed the broken hand that prevented him exploring her body, taking her. He freed his right hand and put it between their bodies, feeling her hard breasts, each with its pointed stigma of desire. He slipped it down her back until it came to the cleft at the base of her spine and he let it rest there, holding the centre of her body hard against him until they had kissed enough.

She took her arms away from around his neck and pushed him away.

‘I hoped I would one day kiss a man like that,’ she said. ‘And when I first saw you, I knew it would be you.’

Her arms were down by her sides and her body stood there, open to him, ready for him.

‘You’re very beautiful,’ said Bond. ‘You kiss more wonderfully than any girl I have ever known.’ He looked down at the bandages on his left hand. ‘Curse this arm,’ he said. ‘I can’t hold you properly or make love to you. It hurts too much. That’s something else Mr Big’s got to pay for.’

She laughed.

She took a handkerchief out of her bag and wiped the lipstick off his mouth. Then she brushed the hair away from his forehead, and kissed him again, lightly and tenderly.

‘It’s just as well,’ she said. ‘There are too many other things on our minds.’

The train rocked him back against her.

He put his hand on her left breast and kissed her white throat. Then he kissed her mouth.

He felt the pounding of his blood softening. He took her by the hand and drew her out into the middle of the little swaying room.

He smiled. ‘Perhaps you’re right,’ he said. ‘When the time comes I want to be alone with you, with all the time in the world. Here there is at least one man who will probably disturb our night. And we’ll have to be up at four in the morning anyway. So there simply isn’t time to begin making love to you now. You get ready for bed and I’ll climb up after you and kiss you good night.’

They kissed once more, slowly, then he stepped away.

‘We’ll just see if we have company next door,’ he said.

He softly pulled the wedge away from under the communicating door and gently turned the lock. He took the Beretta out of its holster, thumbed back the safety-catch and gestured to her to pull open the door so that she was behind it. He gave the signal and she wrenched it quickly open. The empty compartment yawned sarcastically at them.

Bond smiled at her and shrugged his shoulders.

‘Call me when you’re ready,’ he said and went in and closed the door.

The door to the corridor was locked. The room was identical with theirs. Bond went over it very carefully for vulnerable points. There was only the air-conditioning vent in the ceiling and Bond, who was prepared to consider any possibility, dismissed the employment of gas in the system. It would slay all the other occupants of the car. There only remained the waste pipes in the small lavatory and while these certainly could be used to insert some death-dealing medium from the underbelly of the train, the operator would have to be a daring and skilled acrobat. There was no ventilating grill into the corridor.

Bond shrugged his shoulders. If anyone came, it would be through the doors. He would just have to stay awake.

Solitaire called for him. The room smelled of Dior’s ‘Vent Vert’. She was leaning on her elbow and looking down at him from the upper berth.

The bedclothes were pulled up round her shoulder. Bond guessed that she was naked. Her black hair fell away from her head in a dark cascade. With only the reading-lamp on behind her, her face was in shadow. Bond climbed up the little aluminium ladder and leant towards her. She reached towards him and suddenly the bedclothes fell away from her shoulders.

‘Damn you,’ said Bond. ‘You…’

She put her hand over his mouth.

‘“Allumeuse” is the nice word for it,’ she said. ‘It is fun for me to be able to tease such a strong silent man. You burn with such an angry flame. It is the only game I have to play with you and I shan’t be able to play it for long. How many days until your hand is well again?’

Bond bit hard into the soft hand over his mouth. She gave a little scream.

‘Not many,’ said Bond. ‘And then one day when you’re playing your little game you’ll suddenly find yourself pinned down like a butterfly.’

She put her arms round him and they kissed, long and passionately.

Finally she sank back among the pillows.

‘Hurry up and get well,’ she said. ‘I’m tired of my game already.’

Bond climbed down to the floor and pulled her curtains across the berth.

‘Try and get some sleep now,’ he said. ‘We’ve got a long day tomorrow.’

She murmured something and he heard her turn over. She switched off the light.

Bond verified that the wedges were in place under the doors. Then he took off his coat and tie and lay down on the bottom berth. He turned off his own light and lay thinking of Solitaire and listening to the steady gallop of the wheels beneath his head and the comfortable small noises in the room, the gentle rattles and squeaks and murmurs in the coachwork that bring sleep so quickly on a train at night-time.

It was eleven o’clock and the train was on the long stretch between Columbia and Savannah, Georgia. There were another six hours or so to Jacksonville, another six hours of darkness during which The Big Man would almost certainly have instructed his agent to make some move, while the whole train was asleep and while a man could use the corridors without interference.

The great train snaked on through the dark, pounding out the miles through the empty plains and mingy hamlets of Georgia, the ‘Peach State’, the angry moan of its four-toned wind-horn soughing over the wide savannah and the long shaft of its single searchlight ripping the black calico of the night.

Bond turned on his light again and read for a while, but his thoughts were too insistent and he soon gave up and switched the light off. Instead, he thought of Solitaire and of the future and of the more immediate prospects of Jacksonville and St Petersburg and of seeing Leiter again.

Much later, around one o’clock in the morning, he was dozing and on the edge of sleep, when a soft metallic noise quite close to his head brought him wide awake with his hand on his gun.

There was someone at the passage door and the lock was being softly tried.

Bond was immediately on the floor and moving silently on his bare feet. He gently pulled the wedge away from under the door to the next compartment and as gently pulled the bolt and opened the door. He crossed the next compartment and softly began to open the door to the corridor.

There was a deafening click as the bolt came back. He tore the door open and threw himself into the corridor, only to see a flying figure already nearing the forward end of the car.

If his two hands had been free he could have shot the man, but to open the doors he had to tuck his gun into the waistband of his trousers. Bond knew that pursuit would be hopeless. There were too many empty compartments into which the man could dodge and quietly close the door. Bond had worked all this out beforehand. He knew his only chance would be surprise and either a quick shot or the man’s surrender.

He walked a few steps to Compartment H. A tiny diamond of paper protruded into the corridor.

He went back and into their room, locking the doors behind him. He softly turned on his reading light. Solitaire was still asleep. The rest of the paper, a single sheet, lay on the carpet against the passage door. He picked it up and sat on the edge of his bed.

It was a sheet of cheap ruled notepaper. It was covered with irregular lines of writing in rough capitals, in red ink. Bond handled it gingerly, without much hope that it would yield any prints. These people weren’t like that.

Oh Witch [he read] do not slay me,

Spare me. His is the body.

The divine drummer declares that

When he rises with the dawn

He will sound his drums for YOU in the morning

Very early, very early, very early, very early.

Oh Witch that slays the children of men before they are fully matured

Oh Witch that slays the children of men before they are fully matured

The divine drummer declares that

When he rises with the dawn

He will sound his drums for YOU in the morning

Very early, very early, very early, very early.

We are addressing YOU

And YOU will understand.

Bond lay down on his bed and thought.

Then he folded the paper and put it in his pocket-book.

He lay on his back and looked at nothing, waiting for day-break.

12 | THE EVERGLADES

It was around five o’clock in the morning when they slipped off the train at Jacksonville.

It was still dark and the naked platforms of the great Florida junction were sparsely lit. The entrance to the subway was only a few yards from Car 245 and there was no sign of life on the sleeping train as they dived down the steps. Bond had told the attendant to keep the door of their compartment locked after they had gone and the blinds drawn and he thought there was quite a chance they would not be missed until the train reached St Petersburg.

They came out of the subway into the booking-hall. Bond verified that the next express for St Petersburg would be the Silver Meteor, the sister train of the Phantom, due at about nine o’clock, and he booked two Pullman seats on it. Then he took Solitaire’s arm and they walked out of the station into the warm dark street.

There were two or three all-night diners to choose from and they pushed through the door that announced ‘Good Eats’ in the brightest neon. It was the usual sleazy food-machine – two tired waitresses behind a zinc counter loaded with cigarettes and candy and paper-backs and comics. There was a big coffee percolator and a row of butane gas-rings. A door marked ‘Restroom’ concealed its dreadful secrets next to a door marked ‘Private’ which was probably the back entrance. A group of overalled men at one of the dozen stained crueted tables looked up briefly as they came in and then resumed their low conversation. Relief crews for the Diesels, Bond guessed.

There were four narrow booths on the right of the entrance and Bond and Solitaire slipped into one of them. They looked dully at the stained menu card.

After a time, one of the waitresses sauntered over and stood leaning against the partition, running her eyes over Solitaire’s clothes.

‘Orange juice, coffee, scrambled eggs, twice,’ said Bond briefly.

‘’Kay,’ said the girl. Her shoes lethargically scuffed the floor as she sauntered away.

‘The scrambled eggs’ll be cooked with milk,’ said Bond. ‘But one can’t eat boiled eggs in America. They look so disgusting without their shells, mixed up in a tea-cup the way they do them here. God knows where they learned the trick. From Germany, I suppose. And bad American coffee’s the worst in the world, worse even than in England. I suppose they can’t do much harm to the orange juice. After all we are in Florida now.’ He suddenly felt depressed by the thought of their four-hour wait in this unwashed, dog-eared atmosphere.

‘Everybody’s making easy money in America these days,’ said Solitaire. ‘That’s always bad for the customer. All they want is to strip a quick dollar off you and toss you out. Wait till you get down to the coast. At this time of the year, Florida’s the biggest sucker-trap on earth. On the East Coast they fleece the millionaires. Where we’re going they just take it off the little man. Serves him right, of course. He goes there to die. He can’t take it with him.’

‘For heaven’s sake,’ said Bond, ‘what sort of a place are we going to?’

‘Everybody’s nearly dead in St Petersburg,’ explained Solitaire. ‘It’s the Great American Graveyard. When the bank clerk or the post-office worker or the railroad conductor reaches sixty he collects his pension or his annuity and goes to St Petersburg to get a few years’ sunshine before he dies. It’s called “The Sunshine City” The weather’s so good that the evening paper there, The Independent, is given away free any day the sun hasn’t shone by edition time. It only happens three or four times a year and it’s a fine advertisement. Everybody goes to bed around nine o’clock in the evening and during the day the old folks play shuffleboard and bridge, herds of them. There’s a couple of baseball teams down there, the “Kids“ and the “Kubs“, all over seventy-five! Then they play bowls, but most of the time they sit squashed together in droves on things called “Sidewalk Davenports“, rows of benches up and down the sidewalks of the main streets. They just sit in the sun and gossip and doze. It’s a terrifying sight, all these old people with their spectacles and hearing-aids and clicking false-teeth.’

‘Sounds pretty grim,’ said Bond. ‘Why the hell did Mr Big choose this place to operate from?’

‘It’s perfect for him,’ said Solitaire seriously. ‘There’s practically no crime, except cheating at bridge and Canasta. So there’s a very small police force. There’s quite a big Coastguard Station but it’s mainly concerned with smuggling between Tampa and Cuba, and sponge-fishing out of season at Tarpon Springs. I don’t really know what he does there except that he’s got a big agent called “The Robber” Something to do with Cuba, I expect,’ she added thoughtfully. ‘Probably mixed up with Communism. I believe Cuba comes under Harlem and runs red agents all through the Caribbean.

‘Anyway,’ she went on, ‘St Petersburg is probably the most innocent town in America. Everything’s very “folksy” and “gracious”. It’s true there’s a place called “The Restorium”, a hospital for alcoholics. But very old ones, I suppose,’ she laughed, ‘and I expect they’re past doing anyone any harm. You’ll love it,’ she smiled maliciously at Bond. ‘You’ll probably want to settle down there for life and be an “Oldster” too. That’s the great word down there …“oldster”.’

‘God forbid,’ said Bond fervently. ‘It sounds rather like Bournemouth or Torquay. But a million times worse. I hope we don’t get into a shooting match with “The Robber” and his friends. We’d probably hurry a few hundred oldsters off to the cemetery with heart-failure. But isn’t there anyone young in this place?’

‘Oh yes,’ laughed Solitaire. ‘Plenty of them. All the local inhabitants who take the money off the oldsters, for instance. The people who own the motels and the trailer-camps. You could make plenty of money running the bingo tournaments. I’ll be your “barker” – the girl outside who gets the suckers in. Dear Mr Bond,’ she reached over and pressed his hand, ‘will you settle down with me and grow old gracefully in St Petersburg?’

Bond sat back and looked at her critically. ‘I want a long time of disgraceful living with you first,’ he said with a grin. ‘I’m probably better at that. But it suits me that they go to bed at nine down there.’

Her eyes smiled back at him. She took her hand away from his as their breakfast arrived. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You go to bed at nine. Then I shall slip out by the back door and go on the tiles with the Kids and the Kubs.’

The breakfast was as bad as Bond had prophesied.

When they had paid they wandered over to the station waiting-room.

The sun had risen and the light swarmed in dusty bars into the vaulted, empty hall. They sat together in a corner and until the Silver Meteor came in Bond plied her with questions about The Big Man and all she could tell him about his operations.

Occasionally he made a note of a date or a name but there was little she could add to what he knew. She had an apartment to herself in the same Harlem block as Mr Big and she had been kept virtually a prisoner there for the past year. She had two tough negresses as ‘companions’ and was never allowed out without a guard.

From time to time Mr Big would have her brought over to the room where Bond had seen him. There she would be told to divine whether some man or woman, generally bound to the chair, was lying or not. She varied her replies according to whether she sensed these people were good or evil. She knew that her verdict might often be a death sentence but she felt indifferent to the fate of those she judged to be evil. Very few of them were white.

Bond jotted down the dates and details of all these occasions.

Everything she told him added to the picture of a very powerful and active man, ruthless and cruel, commanding a huge network of operations.

All she knew of the gold coins was that she had several times had to question men on how many they had passed and the price they had been paid for them. Very often, she said, they were lying on both counts.

Bond was careful to divulge very little of what he himself knew or guessed. His growing warmth towards Solitaire and his desire for her body were in a compartment which had no communicating door with his professional life.

The Silver Meteor came in on time and they were both relieved to be on their way again and to get away from the dreary world of the big junction.

The train sped on down through Florida, through the forests and swamps, stark and bewitched with Spanish moss, and through the mile upon mile of citrus groves.

All through the centre of the state the moss lent a dead, spectral feeling to the landscape. Even the little townships through which they passed had a grey skeletal aspect with their dried-up, sun-sucked clapboard houses. Only the citrus groves laden with fruit looked green and alive. Everything else seemed baked and desiccated with the heat.

Looking out at the gloomy silent withered forests, Bond thought that nothing could be living in them except bats and scorpions, horned toads and black widow spiders.

They had lunch and then suddenly the train was running along the Gulf of Mexico, through the mangrove swamps and palm groves, endless motels and caravan sites, and Bond caught the smell of the other Florida, the Florida of the advertisements, the land of ‘Miss Orange Blossom 1954’.

They left the train at Clearwater, the last station before St Petersburg. Bond took a cab and gave the address on Treasure Island, half an hour’s drive away. It was two o’clock and the sun blazed down out of a cloudless sky. Solitaire insisted on taking off her hat and veil. ‘It’s sticking to my face,’ she said. ‘Hardly a soul has ever seen me down here.’A big negro with a face pitted with ancient smallpox was held up in his cab at the same time as they were checked at the intersection of Park Street and Central Avenue, where the Avenue runs on to the long Treasure Island causeway across the shallow waters of Boca Ciega Bay.

When the negro saw Solitaire’s profile his mouth fell open. He pulled his cab into the kerb and dived into a drugstore. He called a St Petersburg number.

‘Dis is Poxy,’ he said urgently into the mouthpiece. ‘Gimme da Robber ’n step on it. Dat you, Robber? Lissen, Da Big Man muss be n’town. Whaddya mean yuh jes talked wit him ’n New York? Ah jes seen his gal ’n a Clearwater cab, one of da Stassen Company’s. Headin’ over da Causeway. Sho Ahm sartin. Cross ma heart. Couldn mistake dat eyeful. Wid a man ’n a blue suit, grey Stetson. Seemed like a scar down his face. Whaddya mean, follow ’em? Ah jes couldn believe yuh wouldn tell me da Big Man wuz ’n town ef he wuz. Thought mebbe Ahd better check ’n make sho. Okay, okay. Ah’ll ketch da cab when he comes back over da Causeway, else at Clearwater. Okay, okay. Keep yo shirt on. Ah ain’t done nuthen wrong.’

The man called ‘The Robber’ was through to New York in five minutes. He had been warned about Bond but he couldn’t understand where Solitaire tied in to the picture. When he had finished talking to The Big Man he still didn’t know, but his instructions were quite definite.

He rang off and sat for a while drumming his fingers on his desk. Ten Grand for the job. He’d need two men. That would leave eight Grand for him. He licked his lips and called a poolroom in a downtown bar in Tampa.Bond paid off the cab at The Everglades, a group of neat white and yellow clapboard cottages set on three sides of a square of Bahama grass which ran fifty yards down to a bone white beach and then to the sea. From there, the whole Gulf of Mexico stretched away, as calm as a mirror, until the heat-haze on the horizon married it into the cloudless sky.

After London, after New York, after Jacksonville, it was a sparkling transition.

Bond went through a door marked ‘Office’ with Solitaire demurely at his heels. He rang a bell that said, ‘Manageress: Mrs Stuyvesant’, and a withered shrimp of a woman with blue-rinsed hair appeared and smiled with her pinched lips. ‘Yes?’

‘Mr Leiter?’

‘Oh yes, you’re Mr Bryce. Cabana Number One, right down on the beach. Mr Leiter’s been expecting you since lunchtime. And …?’ She heliographed with her pince-nez towards Solitaire.

‘Mrs Bryce,’ said Bond.

‘Ah yes,’ said Mrs Stuyvesant, wishing to disbelieve.

‘Well, if you’d care to sign the register, I’m sure you and Mrs Bryce would like to freshen up after the journey. The full address, please. Thank you.’