‘The Governor knows you’re coming. They’ve got a well-trained police force. C.I.A. are sending down a good man, I gather. With a communications outfit. They’ve got more of that sort of machinery than we have. Take a cipher machine with the Triple X setting. I want to hear every single detail you turn up. Personal to me. Right?’
‘Right, sir.’ Bond went to the door and let himself out. There was nothing more to be said. This looked like the biggest job the Service had ever been given and, in Bond’s opinion, for he didn’t give much for M.’s guess, he had been relegated to the back row of the chorus. So be it. He would get himself a good sunburn and watch the show from the wings.
When Bond walked out of the building, carrying the neat leather cipher case, an expensive movie camera perhaps, slung over his shoulder, the man in the beige Volkswagen stopped scratching the burn-scab under his shirt, loosened, for the tenth time, the long-barrelled forty-five in the holster under his arm, started the car and put it in gear. He was twenty yards behind Bond’s parked Bentley. He had no idea what the big building was. He had simply obtained Bond’s home address from the receptionist at Shrublands and, as soon as he got out of the Brighton hospital, he had carefully tailed Bond. The car was hired, under an assumed name. When he had done what had to be done he would go straight to London Airport and take the first plane out to any country on the Continent. Count Lippe was a sanguine individual. The job, the private score he had to settle, presented no problem to him. He was a ruthless, vengeful man and he had eliminated many obstreperous and perhaps dangerous people in his life. He reasoned that, if they ever came to hear of this, SPECTRE would not object. The overheard telephone conversation on that first day at the clinic showed that his cover had been broached, however slightly, and it was just conceivable that he could be traced through his membership of the Red Lightning Tong. From there to SPECTRE was a long step, but Sub-operator G knew that once a cover began to run, it ran like an old sock. Apart from that, this man must be paid off. Count Lippe had to be quits with him.
Bond was getting into his car. He had slammed the door. Sub-operator G watched the blue smoke curl from the twin exhausts. He got moving.
On the other side of the road, and a hundred yards behind the Volkswagen, SPECTRE No. 6 slipped his goggles down over his eyes, stamped the 500-c.c. Triumph into gear and accelerated down the road. He swerved neatly through the traffic – he had been a test rider for D.K.W. at one time in his post-war career – and stationed himself ten yards behind the off rear wheel of the Volkswagen and just out of the driver’s line of vision in the windscreen mirror. He had no idea why Sub-operator G was following the Bentley, nor who the Bentley belonged to. His job was to kill the driver of the Volkswagen. He put his hand into the leather satchel he carried slung over his shoulder, took out the heavy grenade – it was twice the normal military size – and watched the traffic ahead for the right pattern to allow his getaway.
Sub-operator G was watching for a similar pattern. He also noted the spacing on the lamp-posts on the pavement in case he might be blocked and have to run off the road. Now the cars ahead were sparse. He stamped his foot into the floor and, driving with his left hand, drew out the Colt with his right. Now he was up with the Bentley’s rear bumper. Now he was alongside. The dark profile was a sitting target. With a last quick glance ahead, he raised the gun.
It was the cheeky iron rattle of the Volkswagen’s air-cooled engine that made Bond turn his head, and it was this minute reduction of the target area that saved his jaw. If he had then accelerated, the second bullet would have got him, but some blessed instinct made his foot stamp the brake at the same time as his head ducked so swiftly that his chin hit the horn button, nearly knocking him out. Almost simultaneously, instead of a third shot, there came the roar of an explosion and the remains of his windscreen, already shattered, cascaded around him. The Bentley had stopped, the engine stalled. Brakes screamed. There were shouts and the panicky screams of horns. Bond shook his head and cautiously raised it. The Volkswagen, one wheel still spinning, lay on its side in front of and broadside to the Bentley. Most of the roof had been blown off. Inside, and half sprawling into the road, was a horrible, glinting mess. Flames were licking at the blistered paintwork. People were gathering. Bond pulled himself together and got quickly out of his car. He shouted, ‘Stand back. The petrol tank’ll go.’ Almost as he said the words there came a dull boom and a cloud of black smoke. The flames spurted. In the distance, sirens sounded. Bond edged through the people and strode quickly back towards his headquarters, his thoughts racing.
