Текст книги "The James Bond Anthology"

Автор книги: Ian Fleming

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Текущая страница: 68 (всего у книги 190 страниц)

Yes, thought Bond. Yes. He was certainly right about that. The French papers would give it such a send-off there’d be no stopping it. They wouldn’t mind how far they went with the pictures or anything else. There wasn’t a press in the world that wouldn’t pick it up. And the Spektor! Would M.’s people or the Deuxième have the sense to guess it was booby-trapped? How many of the best cryptographers in the West would go up with it? God, he must get out of this jam! But how?

The top of Nash’s War and Peace yawned at him. Let’s see. There would be the roar as the train went into the tunnel. Then at once the muffled click and the bullet. Bond’s eyes stared into the violet gloom, measuring the depth of the shadow in his corner under the roof of the top bunk, remembering exactly where his attaché case stood on the floor, guessing what Nash would do after he had fired.

Bond said: ‘You took a bit of a gamble on my letting you team up at Trieste. And how did you know the code of the month?’

Nash said patiently, ‘You don’t seem to get the picture, old man. SMERSH is good – really good. There’s nothing better. We know your code of the month for every year. If anyone in your show noticed these things, noticed the pattern of them, like my show does, you’d realize that every January you lose one of your small chaps somewhere – maybe Tokyo, maybe Timbuctoo. SMERSH just picks one and takes him. Then they screw the code for the year out of him. Anything else he knows, of course. But it’s the code they’re after. Then it’s passed round the Centres. Simple as falling off a log, old man.’

Bond dug his nails into the palms of his hands.

‘As for picking you up at Trieste, old man, I didn’t. Rode down with you–in the front of the train. Got out as we stopped and walked back up the platform. You see, old man, we were waiting for you in Belgrade. Knew you’d call your Chief – or the Embassy or someone. Been listening in on that Yugoslav’s telephone for weeks. Pity we didn’t understand the codeword he shot through to Istanbul. Might have stopped the firework display, or anyway saved our chaps. But the main target was you, old man, and we certainly had you sewn up all right. You were in the killing bottle from the minute you got off that plane in Turkey. It was only a question of when to stuff the cork in.’ Nash took another quick glance at his watch. He looked up. His grinning teeth glistened violet. ‘Pretty soon now, old man. It’s just cork-hour minus fifteen.’

Bond thought: we knew SMERSH was good, but we never knew they were as good as this. The knowledge was vital. Somehow he must get it back. He MUST. Bond’s mind raced round the details of his pitifully thin, pitifully desperate plan.

He said: ‘SMERSH seems to have thought things out pretty well. Must have taken a lot of trouble. There’s only one thing …’ Bond let his voice hang in the air.

‘What’s that, old man?’ Nash, thinking of his report, was alert.

The train began to slow down. Domodossola. The Italian frontier. What about customs? But Bond remembered. There were no formalities for the through carriages until they got to France, to the frontier, Vallorbes. Even then not for the sleeping cars. These expresses cut straight across Switzerland. It was only people who got out at Brigue or Lausanne who had to go through customs in the stations.

‘Well, come on, old man.’ Nash sounded hooked.

‘Not without a cigarette.’

‘Okay. Go ahead. But if there’s a move I don’t like, you’ll be dead.’

Bond slipped his right hand into his hip-pocket. He drew out his broad gunmetal cigarette case. Opened it. Took out a cigarette. Took his lighter out of his trouser pocket. Lit the cigarette and put the lighter back. He left the cigarette case on his lap beside the book. He put his left hand casually over the book and the cigarette case as if to prevent them slipping off his lap. He puffed away at his cigarette. If only it had been a trick one – magnesium flare, or anything he could throw in the man’s face! If only his Service went in for those explosive toys! But at least he had achieved his objective and hadn’t been shot in the process. That was a start.

‘You see.’ Bond described an airy circle with his cigarette to distract Nash’s attention. His left hand slipped the flat cigarette case between the pages of his book. ‘You see, it looks all right, but what about you? What are you going to do after we come out of the Simplon? The conductor knows you’re mixed up with us. They’ll be after you in a flash.’

‘Oh that,’ Nash’s voice was bored again. ‘You don’t seem to have hoisted in that the Russians think these things out. I get off at Dijon and take a car to Paris. I get lost there. A bit of “Third Man” stuff won’t do the story any harm. Anyway it’ll come out later when they dig the second bullet out of you and can’t find the second gun. They won’t catch up with me. Matter of fact, I’ve got a date at noon tomorrow – Room 204 at the Ritz Hotel, making my report to Rosa. She wants to get the kudos for this job. Then I turn into her chauffeur and we drive to Berlin. Come to think of it, old man,’ the flat voice showed emotion, became greedy, ‘I think she may have the Order of Lenin for me in her bag. Lovely grub, as they say.’

The train began to move. Bond tensed. In a few minutes it would come. What a way to die, if he was going to die. Through his own stupidity – blind, lethal stupidity. And lethal for Tatiana. Christ! At any moment he could have done something to dodge this shambles. There had been no lack of opportunity. But conceit and curiosity and four days of love had sucked him along on the easy stream down which it had been planned that he should drift. That was the damnable part of the whole business – the triumph for SMERSH, the one enemy he had always sworn to defeat wherever he met it. We will do this, and he will do that. ‘Comrades, it is easy with a vain fool like this Bond. Watch him take the bait. You will see. I tell you he’s a fool. All Englishmen are fools.’ And Tatiana, the lure – the darling lure. Bond thought of their first night. The black stockings and the velvet ribbon. And all the time SMERSH had been watching, watching him go through his conceited paces, as it had been planned that he would, so that the smear could be built up – the smear on him, the smear on M. who had sent him to Istanbul, the smear on the Service that lived on the myth of its name. God, what a mess! If only … if only his tiny grain of a plan might work!

Ahead, the rumble of the train became a deep boom.

A few more seconds. A few more yards.

The oval mouth between the white pages seemed to gape wider. In a second the dark tunnel would switch out the moonlight on the pages and the blue tongue would lick out for him.

‘Sweet dreams, you English bastard.’

The rumble became a great swift clanging roar.

The spine of the book bloomed flame.

The bullet, homing on Bond’s heart, flashed over its two quiet yards.

Bond pitched forward on to the floor and lay sprawled under the funereal violet light.

27 | TEN PINTS OF BLOOD

It had all depended on the man’s accuracy. Nash had said that Bond would get one bullet through the heart. Bond had taken the gamble that Nash’s aim was as good as he said it was. And it had been.

Bond lay like a dead man lies. Before the bullet, he had recalled the corpses he had seen – how their bodies had looked in death. Now he lay totally collapsed, like a broken doll, his arms and legs carefully outflung.

He explored his sensations. Where the bullet had crashed into the book, his ribs were on fire. The bullet must have gone through the cigarette case and then through the other half of the book. He could feel the hot lead over his heart. It felt as if it was burning inside his ribs. It was only a sharp pain in his head where it had hit the woodwork, and the violet sheen on the scuffed toecaps against his nose, that said he wasn’t dead.

Like an archaeologist, Bond explored the carefully planned ruin of his body. The position of the sprawled feet. The angle of the half-bent knee that would give purchase when it was needed. The right hand that seemed to be clawing at his pierced heart, was within inches, when he could release the book, of the little attaché case – within inches of the lateral stitching that held the flat-bladed throwing-knives, two edged and sharp as razors, that he had mocked when Q Branch had demonstrated the catch that held them. And his left hand, outflung in the surrender of death, rested on the floor and would provide upward leverage when the moment came.

Above him there sounded a long, cavernous yawn. The brown toecaps shifted. Bond watched the shoe-leather strain as Nash stood up. In a minute, with Bond’s gun in his right hand, Nash would climb on to the bottom bunk and reach up and feel through the curtain of hair for the base of the girl’s neck. Then the snout of the Beretta would nuzzle in after the probing fingers, Nash would press the trigger. The roar of the train would cover the muffled boom.

It would be a near thing. Bond desperately tried to remember simple anatomy. Where were the mortal places in the lower body of a man? Where did the main artery run? The Femoral. Down the inside of the thigh. And the External Iliac, or whatever it was called, that became the Femoral? Across the centre of the groin. If he missed both, it would be bad. Bond had no illusions about being able to beat this terrific man in unarmed combat. The first violent stab of his knife had to be decisive.

The brown toecaps moved. They pointed towards the bunk. What was the man doing? There was no sound except the hollow iron clang as the great train tore through the Simplon – through the heart of the Wasenhorn and Monte Leone. The toothglass tinkled. The woodwork creaked comfortably. For a hundred yards on both sides of the little death cell rows of people were sleeping, or lying awake, thinking of their lives and loves, making little plans, wondering who would meet them at the Gare de Lyon. And, all the while, just along the corridor, death was riding with them down the same dark hole, behind the same great Diesel, on the same hot rails.

One brown shoe left the floor. It would have stepped half across Bond. The vulnerable arch would be open above Bond’s head.

Bond’s muscles coiled like a snake’s. His right hand flickered a few centimetres to the hard stitching on the edge of the case. Pressed sideways. Felt the narrow shaft of the knife. Drew it softly half way out without moving his arm.

The brown heel lifted off the ground. The toe bent and took the weight.

Now the second foot had gone.

Softly move the weight here, take the purchase there, grasp the knife hard so that it wouldn’t turn on a bone, and then …

In one violent corkscrew of motion, Bond’s body twisted up from the floor. The knife flashed.

The fist with the long steel finger, and all Bond’s arm and shoulder behind it, lunged upwards. Bond’s knuckles felt flannel. He held the knife in, forcing it further.

A ghastly wailing cry came down to him. The Beretta clattered to the floor. Then the knife was wrenched from Bond’s hand as the man gave a convulsive twist and crashed down.

Bond had planned for the fall, but, as he sidestepped towards the window, a flailing hand caught him and sent him thudding on to the lower bunk. Before he could recover himself, up from the floor rose the terrible face, its eyes shining violet, the violet teeth bared. Slowly, agonizingly, the two huge hands groped for him.

Bond, half on his back, kicked out blindly. His shoe connected; but then his foot was held and twisted and he felt himself slipping downwards.

Bond’s fingers scrabbled for a hold in the stuff of the bunk. Now the other hand had him by the thigh. Nails dug into him.

Bond’s body was being twisted and pulled down. Soon the teeth would be at him. Bond hammered out with his free leg. It made no difference. He was going.

Suddenly Bond’s scrabbling fingers felt something hard. The book! How did one work the thing? Which way up was it? Would it shoot him or Nash? Desperately Bond held it out towards the great sweating face. He pressed at the base of the cloth spine.

‘Click!’ Bond felt the recoil. ‘Click-click-click-click.’ Now Bond felt the heat under his fingers. The hands on his legs were going limp. The glistening face was drawing back. A noise came from the throat, a terrible gargling noise. Then, with a slither and a crack, the body fell forward on to the floor and the head crashed back against the woodwork.Bond lay and panted through clenched teeth. He stared up at the violet light above the door. He noticed that the loop of the filament waxed and waned. It crossed his mind that the dynamo under the carriage must be defective. He blinked his eyes to focus the light more closely. The sweat ran into them and stung. He lay still, doing nothing about it.

The galloping boom of the train began to change. It sounded hollower. With a final echoing roar, the Orient Express sped out into the moonlight and slackened speed.

Bond lazily reached up and pulled at the edge of the blind. He saw warehouses and sidings. Lights shone brightly, cleanly on the rails. Good, powerful lights. The lights of Switzerland.

The train slid quietly to a stop.

In the steady, singing silence, a small noise came from the floor. Bond cursed himself for not having made certain. He quickly bent down, listening. He held the book forward at the ready, just in case. No movement. Bond reached and felt for the jugular vein. No pulse. The man was quite dead. The corpse had been settling.

Bond sat back and waited impatiently for the train to move again. There was a lot to be done. Even before he could see to Tatiana, there would have to be the cleaning up.

With a jerk the long express started softly rolling. Soon the train would be slaloming fast down through the foothills of the Alps into the Canton Valais. Already there was a new sound in the wheels – a hurrying lilt, as if they were glad the tunnel was past.

Bond got to his feet and stepped over the sprawling legs of the dead man and turned on the top light.

What a shambles! The place looked like a butcher’s shop. How much blood did a body contain? He remembered. Ten pints. Well, it would soon all be there. As long as it didn’t spread into the passage! Bond stripped the bedclothes off the bottom bunk and set to work.

At last the job was done – the walls swabbed down around the covered bulk on the floor, the suitcases ready for the getaway to Dijon.

Bond drank down a whole carafe of water. Then he stepped up and gently shook the shoulder of fur.

There was no response. Had the man lied? Had he killed her with the poison?

Bond thrust his hand in against her neck. It was warm. Bond felt for the lobe of an ear and pinched it hard. The girl stirred sluggishly and moaned. Again Bond pinched the ear, and again. At last a muffled voice said, ‘Don’t.’

Bond smiled. He shook her. He went on shaking until Tatiana slowly turned over on her side. Two doped blue eyes gazed into his and closed again. ‘What is it?’ The voice was sleepily angry.

Bond talked to her and bullied her and cursed her. He shook her more roughly. At last she sat up. She gazed vacantly at him. Bond pulled her legs out so that they hung down over the edge. Somehow he manhandled her down on to the bottom bunk.

Tatiana looked terrible – the slack mouth, the upturned, sleep-drunk eyes, the tangle of damp hair. Bond got to work with a wet towel and her comb.

Lausanne came and, an hour later, the French frontier at Vallorbes. Bond left Tatiana and went out and stood in the corridor, just in case. But the customs and passport men brushed past him to the conductor’s cabin, and, after five inscrutable minutes, went on down the train.

Bond stepped back into the compartment. Tatiana was asleep again. Bond looked at Nash’s watch, which was now on his own wrist. 4.30. Another hour to Dijon. Bond set to work.

At last Tatiana’s eyes opened wide. Her pupils were more or less centred. She said, ‘Stop it now, James.’ She closed her eyes again. Bond wiped the sweat off his face. He took the bags, one by one, to the end of the corridor and piled them against the exit. Then he went along to the conductor and told him that Madame was not well and that they would be leaving the train at Dijon.

Bond gave the conductor a final tip. ‘Do not derange yourself,’ he said. ‘I have taken the luggage out so as not to disturb Madame. My friend, the one with fair hair, is a doctor. He has been sitting up with us all night. I have put him to sleep in my bunk. The man was exhausted. It would be kind not to waken him until ten minutes before Paris.’

‘Certainement, Monsieur.’ The conductor had not been showered with money like this since the good days of travelling millionaires. He handed over Bond’s passport and tickets. The train began to slacken speed. ‘Voilà que nous y sommes.’

Bond went back to the compartment. He dragged Tatiana to her feet and out into the corridor and shut the door on the white pile of death beside the bunk.

At last they were down the steps and on to the hard, wonderful, motionless platform. A blue-smocked porter took their luggage.

The sun was beginning to rise. At that hour of the morning there were very few passengers awake. Only a handful in the third class, who had ridden ‘hard’ through the night, saw a young man help a young girl away from the dusty carriage with the romantic names on its side towards the drab door that said ‘SORTIE’.

28 | LA TRICOTEUSE

The taxi drew up at the Rue Cambon entrance to the Ritz Hotel.

Bond looked at Nash’s watch. 11.45. He must be dead punctual. He knew that if a Russian spy was even a few minutes early or late for a rendezvous the rendezvous was automatically cancelled. He paid off the taxi and went through the door on the left that leads into the Ritz bar.

Bond ordered a double vodka martini. He drank it half down. He felt wonderful. Suddenly the last four days, and particularly last night, were washed off the calendar. Now he was on his own, having his private adventure. All his duties had been taken care of. The girl was sleeping in a bedroom at the Embassy. The Spektor, still pregnant with explosive, had been taken away by the bomb-disposal squad of the Deuxième Bureau. He had spoken to his old friend René Mathis, now head of the Deuxième, and the concierge at the Cambon entrance to the Ritz had been told to give him a pass-key and to ask no questions.

René had been delighted to find himself again involved with Bond in une affaire noire. ‘Have confidence, cher James,’ he had said. ‘I will execute your mysteries. You can tell me the story afterwards. Two laundry-men with a large laundry basket will come to Room 204 at 12.15. I shall accompany them dressed as the driver of their camion. We are to fill the laundry basket and take it to Orly and await an R.A.F. Canberra which will arrive at two o’clock. We hand over the basket. Some dirty washing which was in France will be in England. Yes?’

Head of Station F had spoken to M. on the scrambler. He had passed over a short written report from Bond. He had asked for the Canberra. No, he had no idea what it was for. Bond had only shown up to deliver the girl and the Spektor. He had eaten a huge breakfast and had left the Embassy saying he would be back after lunch.

Bond looked again at the time. He finished his martini. He paid for it and walked out of the bar and up the steps to the concierge’s lodge.

The concierge looked sharply at him and handed over a key. Bond walked over to the lift and got in and went up to the third floor.

The lift door clanged behind him. Bond walked softly down the corridor, looking at the numbers.

204. Bond put his right hand inside his coat and on to the taped butt of the Beretta. It was tucked into the waistband of his trousers. He could feel the metal of the silencer warm across his stomach.

He knocked once with his left hand.

‘Come in.’

It was a quavering voice. An old woman’s voice.

Bond tried the handle of the door. It was unlocked. He slipped the pass-key into his coat-pocket. He pushed the door open with one swift motion and stepped in and shut it behind him.

It was a typical Ritz sitting-room, extremely elegant, with good Empire furniture. The walls were white and the curtains and chair covers were of a small patterned chintz of red roses on white. The carpet was wine-red and close-fitted.

In a pool of sunshine, in a low armed chair beside a Directoire writing desk, a little old woman sat knitting.

The tinkle of the steel needles continued. The eyes behind light-blue tinted bi-focals examined Bond with polite curiosity.

‘Oui, Monsieur?’ The voice was deep and hoarse. The thickly powdered, rather puffy face under the white hair showed nothing but well-bred interest.

Bond’s hand on the gun under his coat was taut as a steel spring. His half-closed eyes flickered round the room and back to the little old woman in the chair.

Had he made a mistake? Was this the wrong room? Should he apologize and get out? Could this woman possibly belong to SMERSH? She looked so exactly like the sort of respectable rich widow one would expect to find sitting by herself in the Ritz, whiling the time away with her knitting. The sort of woman who would have her own table, and her favourite waiter, in a corner of the restaurant downstairs – not, of course, the grill room. The sort of woman who would doze after lunch and then be fetched by an elegant black limousine with white side-walled tyres and be driven to the tea-room in the rue de Berri to meet some other rich crone. The old-fashioned black dress with the touch of lace at the throat and wrists, the thin gold chain that hung down over the shapeless bosom and ended in a folding lorgnette, the neat little feet in the sensible black-buttoned boots that barely touched the floor. It couldn’t be Klebb! Bond had got the number of the room wrong. He could feel the perspiration under his arms. But now he would have to play the scene through.

‘My name is Bond, James Bond.’

‘And I, Monsieur, am the Comtesse Metterstein. What can I do for you?’ The French was rather thick. She might be German Swiss. The needles tinkled busily.

‘I am afraid Captain Nash has met with an accident. He won’t be coming today. So I came instead.’

Did the eyes narrow a fraction behind the pale blue spectacles?

‘I have not the pleasure of the Captain’s acquaintance, Monsieur. Nor of yours. Please sit down and state your business.’ The woman inclined her head an inch towards the high-backed chair beside the writing desk.

One couldn’t fault her. The graciousness of it all was devastating. Bond walked across the room and sat down. Now he was about six feet away from her. The desk held nothing but a tall old-fashioned telephone with a receiver on a hook, and, within reach of her hand, an ivory-buttoned bellpush. The black mouth of the telephone yawned at Bond politely.

Bond stared rudely into the woman’s face, examining it. It was an ugly face, toadlike, under the powder and under the tight cottage-loaf of white hair. The eyes were so light brown as to be almost yellow. The pale lips were wet and blubbery below the fringe of nicotine-stained moustache. Nicotine? Where were her cigarettes? There was no ashtray – no smell of smoke in the room.

Bond’s hand tightened again on his gun. He glanced down at the bag of knitting, at the shapeless length of small-denier beige wool the woman was working on. The steel needles. What was there odd about them? The ends were discoloured as if they had been held in fire. Did knitting needles ever look like that?

‘Eh bien, Monsieur?’ Was there an edge to the voice? Had she read something in his face?

Bond smiled. His muscles were tense, waiting for any movement, any trick. ‘It’s no use,’ he said cheerfully, gambling. ‘You are Rosa Klebb. And you are Head of Otdyel II of SMERSH. You are a torturer and a murderer. You wanted to kill me and the Romanov girl. I am very glad to meet you at last.’

The eyes had not changed. The harsh voice was patient and polite. The woman reached out her left hand towards the bellpush. ‘Monsieur, I am afraid you are deranged. I must ring for the valet de chambre and have you shown to the door.’

Bond never knew what saved his life. Perhaps it was the flash of realization that no wires led from the bell-push to the wall or into the carpet. Perhaps it was the sudden memory of the English ‘Come in’ when the expected knock came on the door. But, as her finger reached the ivory knob, he hurled himself sideways out of the chair.

As Bond hit the ground there was a sharp noise of tearing calico. Splinters from the back of his chair sprayed around him. The chair crashed to the floor.

Bond twisted over, tugging at his gun. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed a curl of blue smoke coming from the mouth of the ‘telephone’. Then the woman was on him, the knitting needles glinting in her clenched fists.

She stabbed downwards at his legs. Bond lashed out with his feet and hurled her sideways. She had aimed at his legs! As he got to one knee, Bond knew what the coloured tips of the needles meant. It was poison. Probably one of those German nerve poisons. All she had to do was scratch him, even through his clothes.

Bond was on his feet. She was coming at him again. He tugged furiously at his gun. The silencer had caught. There was a flash of light. Bond dodged. One of the needles rattled against the wall behind him and the dreadful chunk of woman, the white bun of wig askew on her head, the slimy lips drawn back from her teeth, was on top of him.

Bond, not daring to use his naked fists against the needles, vaulted sideways over the desk.

Panting and talking to herself in Russian, Rosa Klebb scuttled round the desk, the remaining needle held forward like a rapier. Bond backed away, working at the stuck gun. The back of his legs came against a small chair. He let go the gun and reached behind him and snatched it up. Holding it by the back, with its legs pointing like horns, he went round the desk to meet her. But she was beside the bogus telephone. She swept it up and aimed it. Her hand went to the button. Bond leapt forward. He crashed the chair down. Bullets sprayed into the ceiling and plaster pattered down on his head.

Bond lunged again. The legs of the chair clutched the woman round the waist and over her shoulders. God she was strong! She gave way, but only to the wall. There she held her ground, spitting at Bond over the top of the chair, while the knitting needle quested towards him like a long scorpion’s sting.

Bond stood back a little, holding the chair at arms’ length. He took aim and high-kicked at the probing wrist. The needle sailed away into the room and pinged down behind him.

Bond came in closer. He examined the position. Yes, the woman was held firmly against the wall by the four legs of the chair. There was no way she could get out of the cage except by brute force. Her arms and legs and head were free, but the body was pinned to the wall.

The woman hissed something in Russian. She spat at him over the chair. Bond bent his head and wiped his face against his sleeve. He looked up and into the mottled face.

‘That’s all, Rosa,’ he said. ‘The Deuxième will be here in a minute. In an hour or so you’ll be in London. You won’t be seen leaving the hotel. You won’t be seen going into England. In fact very few people will see you again. From now on you’re just a number on a secret file. By the time we’ve finished with you you’ll be ready for the lunatic asylum.’

The face, a few feet away, was changing. Now the blood had drained out of it, and it was yellow. But not, thought Bond, with fear. The pale eyes looked levelly into his. They were not defeated.

The wet, shapeless mouth lengthened in a grin.

‘And where will you be when I am in the asylum, Mister Bond?’

‘Oh, getting on with my life.’

‘I think not, Angliski spion.’

Bond hardly noticed the words. He had heard the click of the door opening. A burst of laughter came from the room behind him.

‘Eh bien,’ it was the voice of delight that Bond remembered so well. ‘The 70th position! Now, at last, I have seen everything. And invented by an Englishman! James, this really is an insult to my countrymen.’

‘I don’t recommend it,’ said Bond over his shoulder. ‘It’s too strenuous. Anyway, you can take over now. I’ll introduce you. Her name’s Rosa. You’ll like her. She’s a big noise in SMERSH – she looks after the murdering, as a matter of fact.’

Mathis came up. There were two laundry-men with him. The three of them stood and looked respectfully into the dreadful face.

‘Rosa,’ said Mathis thoughtfully. ‘But, this time, a Rosa Malheur. Well, well! But I am sure she is uncomfortable in that position. You two, bring along the panier de fleurs – she will be more comfortable lying down.’

The two men walked to the door. Bond heard the creak of the laundry basket.

The woman’s eyes were still locked in Bond’s. She moved a little, shifting her weight. Out of Bond’s sight, and not noticed by Mathis, who was still examining her face, the toe of one shiny buttoned boot pressed under the instep of the other. From the point of its toe there slid forward half an inch of thin knife blade. Like the knitting needles, the steel had a dirty bluish tinge.

The two men came up and put the big square basket down beside Mathis.

‘Take her,’ said Mathis. He bowed slightly to the woman. ‘It has been an honour.’

‘Au revoir, Rosa,’ said Bond.

The yellow eyes blazed briefly.

‘Farewell, Mister Bond.’

The boot, with its tiny steel tongue, flashed out.

Bond felt a sharp pain in his right calf. It was only the sort of pain you would get from a kick. He flinched and stepped back. The two men seized Rosa Klebb by the arms.

Mathis laughed. ‘My poor James,’ he said. ‘Count on SMERSH to have the last word.’

The tongue of dirty steel had withdrawn into the leather. Now it was only a harmless bundle of old woman that was being lifted into the basket.

Mathis watched the lid being secured. He turned to Bond. ‘It is a good day’s work you have done, my friend,’ he said. ‘But you look tired. Go back to the Embassy and have a rest because this evening we must have dinner together. The best dinner in Paris. And I will find the loveliest girl to go with it.’