The James Bond Anthology полностью

There was a new and powerful Champion harpoon gun and a commando dagger of the type devised by Wilkinsons during the war. Finally, in a box covered with danger-labels, there was the heavy limpet mine, a flat cone of explosive on a base, studded with wide copper bosses, so powerfully magnetized that the mine would stick like a clam to any metal hull. There were a dozen pencil-shaped metal and glass fuses set for ten minutes to eight hours and a careful memorandum of instructions that were as simple as the rest of the gear. There was even a box of benzedrine tablets to give endurance and heightened perception during the operation and an assortment of underwater torches, including one that threw only a tiny pencil-thin beam.

Bond and Quarrel went through everything, testing joints and contacts until they were satisfied that nothing further remained to be done, then Bond went down among the trees and gazed and gazed at the waters of the bay, guessing at depths, tracing routes through the broken reef and estimating the path of the moon, which would be his only point of reckoning on the tortuous journey. At five o’clock, Strangways arrived with news of the Secatur.

‘They’ve cleared Port Maria,’ he said. ‘They’ll be here in ten minutes at the outside. Mr Big had a passport in the name of Gallia and the girl in the name of Latrelle, Simone Latrelle. She was in her cabin, prostrate with what the negro captain of the Secatur described as seasickness. It may have been. Scores of empty fish-tanks on board. More than a hundred. Otherwise nothing suspicious and they were given a clean bill. I wanted to go on board as one of the Customs team but I thought it best that the show should be absolutely normal. Mr Big stuck to his cabin. He was reading when they went to see his papers. How’s the gear?’

‘Perfect,’ said Bond. ‘Guess we’ll operate tomorrow night. Hope there’s a bit of a wind. If the air-bubbles are spotted we shall be in a mess.’

Quarrel came in. ‘She’s coming through the reef now, Cap’n.’

They went down as close to the shore as they dared and put their glasses on her.

She was a handsome craft, black with a grey super-structure, seventy foot long and built for speed – at least twenty knots, Bond guessed. He knew her history, built for a millionaire in 1947 and powered with twin General Motors Diesels, steel hull and all the latest wireless gadgets, including ship-to-shore telephone and Decca navigator. She was wearing the Red Ensign at her cross-trees and the Stars and Stripes aft and she was making about three knots through the twenty-foot opening of the reef.

She turned sharply inside the reef and came down to seaward of the island. When she was below it, she put her helm hard over and came up with the island to port. At the same time three negroes in white ducks came running down the cliff steps to the narrow jetty and stood by to catch lines. There was a minimum of backing and filling before she was made fast just opposite to the watchers ashore, and the two anchors roared down among the rocks and coral scattered round the island’s foundations in the sand. She lay well secured even against a ‘Norther’. Bond estimated there would be about twenty feet of water below her keel.

As they watched, the huge figure of Mr Big appeared on deck. He stepped on to the jetty and started slowly to climb the steep cliff steps. He paused often, and Bond thought of the diseased heart pumping laboriously in the great grey-black body.

He was followed by two negro members of the crew hauling up a light stretcher on which a body was strapped. Through his glasses Bond could see Solitaire’s black hair. Bond was worried and puzzled and he felt a tightening of the heart at her nearness. He prayed the stretcher was only a precaution to prevent Solitaire from being recognized from the shore.

Then a chain of twelve men was established up the steps and the fish-tanks were handed up one by one. Quarrel counted a hundred and twenty of them.

Then some stores went up by the same method.

‘Not taking much up this time,’ commented Strangways when the operation ceased. ‘Only half a dozen cases gone up. Generally about fifty. Can’t be staying long.’

He had hardly finished speaking before a fish-tank, which their glasses showed was half full of water and sand, was being gingerly passed back to the ship, down the human ladder of hands. Then another and another, at about five-minute intervals.

‘My God,’ said Strangways. ‘They’re loading her up already. That means they’ll be sailing in the morning. Wonder if it means they’ve decided to clean the place out and that this is the last cargo.’

Bond watched carefully for a while and then they walked quietly up through the trees, leaving Quarrel to report developments.

They sat down in the living-room, and while Strangways mixed himself a whisky-and-soda, Bond gazed out of the window and marshalled his thoughts.