The night guard let them out on to the steps. Threadneedle Street was almost deserted. The long City night was beginning. Bond said goodbye to Colonel Smithers and walked along to the Tube. He had never thought very much about the Bank of England, but now that he had been inside the place he decided that the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street might be old but she still had some teeth left in her head.
Bond had been told to report back to M. at six. He did so. M.’s face was no longer pink and shining. The long day had knocked it about, stressed it, shrunken it. When Bond went in and took the chair across the desk, he noticed the conscious effort M. made to clear his mind, cope with the new problem the day was to fling at him. M. straightened himself in his chair and reached for his pipe. ‘Well?’
Bond knew the false belligerence of that particular bark. He told the gist of the story in less than five minutes.
When he had finished, M. said thoughtfully, ‘Suppose we’ve got to take it on. Don’t understand a thing about the pound and bank rate and all that but everyone seems to be taking it damned seriously. Personally I should have thought the strength of the pound depended on how hard we all worked rather than how much gold we’d got. Germans didn’t have much gold after the war. Look where they’ve got in ten years. However, that’s probably too easy an answer for the politicians – or more likely too difficult. Got any ideas how to tackle this chap Goldfinger? Any way of getting closer to him, offering to do some dirty work for him or something like that?’
Bond said thoughtfully, ‘I wouldn’t get anywhere sucking up to him, asking him for a job or something of that sort, sir. I should say he’s the sort of man who only respects people who are tougher or smarter than he is. I’ve given him one beating and the only message I got from him was that he’d like me to play golf with him. Perhaps I’d better do just that.’
‘Fine way for one of my top men to spend his time.’ The sarcasm in M.’s voice was weary, resigned. ‘All right. Go ahead. But if what you say is right, you’d better see that you beat him. What’s your cover story?’
Bond shrugged. ‘I hadn’t thought, sir. Perhaps I’d better be thinking of leaving Universal Export. No future in it. Having a holiday while I look round. Thinking of emigrating to Canada. Fed up here. Something like that. But perhaps I’d better play it the way the cards fall. I wouldn’t think he’s an easy man to fool.’
‘All right. Report progress. And don’t think I’m not interested in this case.’ M.’s voice had changed. So had his expression. His eyes had become urgent, commanding. ‘Now I’ll give you one piece of information the Bank didn’t give you. It just happens that I also know what Mr Goldfinger’s gold bars look like. As a matter of fact I was handling one today – scratched Z and all. It had come in with that haul we made last week when the Redland Resident Director’s office “caught fire” in Tangier. You’ll have seen the signals. Well, that’s the twentieth of these particular gold bars that have come our way since the war.’
Bond interrupted, ‘But that Tangier bar was out of the SMERSH safe.’
‘Exactly. I’ve checked. All the other nineteen bars with the scratched Z have been taken from SMERSH operatives.’ M. paused. He said mildly, ‘D’you know, 007, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Goldfinger doesn’t turn out to be the foreign banker, the treasurer so to speak, of SMERSH.’
James Bond flung the D.B. III through the last mile of straight and did a racing change down into third and then into second for the short hill before the inevitable traffic crawl through Rochester. Leashed in by the velvet claw of the front discs, the engine muttered its protest with a mild back-popple from the twin exhausts. Bond went up into third again, beat the lights at the bottom of the hill and slid resignedly up to the back of the queue that would crawl on for a quarter of an hour – if he was lucky – through the sprawl of Rochester and Chatham.
Bond settled back into second and let the car idle. He reached for the wide gunmetal case of Morland cigarettes on the neighbouring bucket seat, fumbled for one and lit it from the dashboard.
He had chosen the A.2 in preference to the A.20 to Sandwich because he wanted to take a quick look at Goldfinger-land – Reculver and those melancholy forsaken reaches of the Thames which Goldfinger had chosen for his parish. He would then cross the Isle of Thanet to Ramsgate and leave his bag at the Channel Packet, have an early lunch and be off to Sandwich.
