The James Bond Anthology полностью

‘They were in a leaden box under the pilot’s seat. I have verified them. Perfectly simple when the time comes. They will of course be kept apart in the hiding place. The rubber bags are splendid. Just what was needed. I have verified that they seal completely watertight.’

‘No danger from radiation?’

‘Not now. Everything is in the leaden cases.’ Kotze shrugged. ‘I may have picked up a little while I was working on the monsters but I wore the harness. I will watch for signs. I know what to do.’

‘You are a brave man, Kotze. I won’t go near the damned things until I have to. I value my sex-life too much. So you are satisfied with everything? You have no problems? Nothing has been left on the plane?’

Kotze had got himself under control. He had been bursting with the news, with his relief that the technical problems were within his power. Now he felt empty, tired. He had voided himself of the tensions that had been with him for weeks. After all this planning, all these dangers, supposing his knowledge had not been enough! Supposing the bloody English had invented some new safety device, some secret control, of which he knew nothing! But when the time came, when he unwrapped the protective webbing and got to work with his jeweller’s tools, then triumph and gratitude had flooded into him. No, now there were no problems. Everything was all right. Now there was only routine. Kotze said dully, ‘No. There are no problems. Everything is there. I will go and get the job finished.’

Largo watched the thin figure shamble off along the deck. Scientists were queer fish. They saw nothing but science. Kotze couldn’t visualize the risks that still had to be run. For him the turning of a few screws was the end of the job. For the rest of the time he would be a useless supercargo. It would be easier to get rid of him. But that couldn’t be done yet. He would have to be kept on just in case the weapons had to be used. But he was a depressing little man and a near hysteric. Largo didn’t like such people near him. They lowered his spirits. They smelled of bad luck. Kotze would have to be found some job in the engine room where he could be kept busy and, above all, out of sight.

Largo went into the cockpit bridge. The captain was sitting at the wheel, a light aluminium affair consisting only of the bottom half of a circle. Largo said, ‘Okay. Let’s go.’ The captain reached out his hand to the bank of buttons at his side and pressed the one that said ‘Start Both’. There came a low, hollow rumble from amidships. A light blinked on the panel to show that both engines were firing properly. The captain pulled the electro-magnetic gear shift to ‘Slow Ahead Both’ and the yacht began to move. The captain made it ‘Full Ahead Both’ and the yacht trembled and settled a little in the stern. The captain watched the revolution counter, his hand on a squat lever at his side. At twenty knots the counter showed 5,000. The captain inched back the lever that depressed the great steel scoop below the hull. The revolutions remained the same, but the finger of the speedometer crawled on round the dial until it said forty knots. Now the yacht was half-flying, half-planing across the glittering sheet of still water, the hull supported four feet above the surface on the broad, slightly uptilted metal skid and with only a few feet of the stern and the two big screws submerged. It was a glorious sensation and Largo, as he always did, thrilled to it.

The motor yacht, Disco Volante, was a hydrofoil craft, built for Largo with SPECTRE funds by the Italian constructors, Leopoldo Rodrigues, of Messina, the only firm in the world to have successfully adapted the Shertel–Sachsenberg system to commercial use. With a hull of aluminium and magnesium alloy, two Daimler-Benz four-stroke diesels supercharged by twin Brown-Boveri turbo superchargers, the Disco Volante could move her 100 tons at around fifty knots, with a cruising range at that speed of around four hundred miles. She had cost £200,000, but she had been the only craft in the world with the speed, cargo- and passenger-space, and with the essential shallow draft for the job required of her in Bahamian waters.

The constructors claim of this type of craft that it has a particular refinement that SPECTRE had appreciated. Having high stability and a shallow draft, Aliscafos, as they are called in Italy, do not determine magnetic field variation, nor do they cause pressure waves – both desirable characteristics, in case the Disco Volante might wish, some time in her career, to escape detection.