The James Bond Anthology полностью

‘You don’t know how I have longed for an English audience,’ he said as if he was addressing a Press conference. ‘You don’t know how I have longed to tell my story. As a matter of fact, a full account of my operations is now in the hands of a very respectable firm of Edinburgh solicitors. I beg their pardon – Writers to the Signet. Well out of danger.’ He beamed from one to the other. ‘And these good folk have instructions to open the envelope on the completion of the first successful flight of the Moonraker. But you lucky people shall have a preview of what I have written and then, when tomorrow at noon you see through those open doors,’ he gestured to his right, ‘the first wisp of steam from the turbines and know that you are to be burnt alive in about half a second, you will have the momentary satisfaction of knowing what it is all in aid of, as,’ he grinned wolfishly, ‘we Englishmen say.’

‘You can spare us the jokes,’ said Bond roughly. ‘Get on with your story, Kraut.’

Drax’s eyes blazed momentarily. ‘A Kraut. Yes, I am indeed a Reichsdeutscher’ – the mouth beneath the red moustache savoured the fine word – ‘and even England will soon agree that they have been licked by just one single German. And then perhaps they’ll stop calling us Krauts – BY ORDER!’ The words were yelled out and the whole of Prussian militarism was in the parade-ground bellow.

Drax glowered across the desk at Bond, the great splayed teeth under the red moustache tearing nervously at one fingernail after another. Then, with an effort, he crammed his right hand into his trouser pocket, as if to put it out of temptation, and picked up his cigar with his left. He puffed at it for a moment and then, his voice still taut, he began.

22 | PANDORA’S BOX

‘My real name,’ said Drax, addressing himself to Bond, ‘is Graf Hugo von der Drache. My mother was English and because of her I was educated in England until I was twelve. Then I could stand this filthy country no longer and I completed my education in Berlin and Leipzig.’

Bond could imagine that the hulking body with the ogre’s teeth had not been very welcome at an English private school. And being a foreign count with a mouthful of names would not have helped much.

‘When I was twenty,’ Drax’s eyes glowed reminiscently, ‘I went to work in the family business. It was a subsidiary of the great steel combine Rheinmetal Börsig. Never heard of it, I suppose. Well, if you’d been hit by an 88 mm. shell during the war it would probably have been one of theirs. Our subsidiary were experts in special steels and I learned all about them and a lot about the aircraft industry. Our most exacting customers. That’s when I first heard about Columbite. Worth diamonds in those days. Then I joined the party and almost immediately we were at war. A wonderful time. I was twenty-eight and a lieutenant in the 140th Panzer Regiment. And we ran through the British Army and France like a knife through butter. Intoxicating.’

For a moment Drax puffed luxuriously at his cigar and Bond guessed that he was seeing the burning villages of Belgium in the smoke.

‘Those were great days, my dear Bond.’ Drax reached out a long arm and tapped the ash of his cigar off on to the floor. ‘But then I was picked out for the Brandenburg Division and I had to leave the girls and the champagne and go back to Germany and start training for the big water-jump to England. My English was needed in the Division. We were all going to be in English uniforms. It would have been fun, but the damned generals said it couldn’t be done and I was transferred to the Foreign Intelligence Service of the S.S. The R.S.H.A. it was called, and SS Obergruppenführer Kaltenbrunner had just taken over the command after Heydrich was assassinated in ’42. He was a good man and I was under the direct orders of a still better one, Obersturmbannführer,’ he rolled out the delicious title with relish, ‘Otto Skorzeny. His job in the R.S.H.A. was terrorism and sabotage. A pleasant interlude, my dear Bond, during which I was able to bring many an Englishman to book which,’ Drax beamed coldly at Bond, ‘gave me much pleasure. But then,’ Drax’s fist crashed down on the desk, ‘Hitler was betrayed again by those swinish generals and the English and Americans were allowed to land in France.’

‘Too bad,’ said Bond drily.