‘They seem all right. Very dull and rich. Terribly serious for something as romantic as treasure hunting. They seem to spend all their time with Largo. Plotting and planning I suppose. And they never seem to go out in the sun or go bathing or anything. It’s as if they didn’t want to get sunburned. As far as I can gather, none of them have ever been in the tropics before. Just a typical bunch of stuffy businessmen. They’re probably better than that. I haven’t seen much of them. Largo’s giving a party for them at the Casino tonight.’
‘What do you do all day?’
‘Oh, I fool around. Do a bit of shopping for the yacht. Drive around in the car. Bathe on other people’s beaches when their houses are empty. I like underwater swimming. I’ve got an aqualung and I take one of the crew out or a fisherman. The crew are better. They all do it.’
‘I used to do it a bit. I’ve brought my gear. Will you show me some good bits of reef some time?’
The girl looked pointedly at her watch. ‘I might do. It’s time I went.’ She got up. ‘Thanks for the drink. I’m afraid I can’t take you back. I’m going the other way. They’ll get you a taxi here.’ She shuffled her feet into her sandals.
Bond followed the girl through the restaurant to her car. She got in and pressed the starter. Bond decided to risk another snub. He said, ‘Perhaps I’ll see you at the Casino tonight, Dominetta.’
‘P’raps.’ She put the car pointedly into gear. She took another look at him. She decided that she did want to see him again. She said, ‘But for God’s sake don’t call me Dominetta. I’m never called that. People call me Domino.’ She gave him a brief smile, but it was a smile into the eyes. She raised a hand. The rear wheels spat sand and gravel and the little blue car whirled out along the driveway to the main road. It paused at the intersection and then, as Bond watched, turned right-handed towards Nassau.
Bond smiled. He said, ‘Bitch,’ and walked back into the restaurant to pay his bill and have a taxi called.
12 | THE MAN FROM THE C.I.A.
The taxi took Bond out to the airport at the other end of the island by the Interfield Road. The man from the Central Intelligence Agency was due in by Pan American at 1.15. His name was Larkin, F. Larkin. Bond hoped he wouldn’t be a muscle-bound ex-college man with a crew-cut and a desire to show up the incompetence of the British, the backwardness of their little Colony, and the clumsy ineptitude of Bond, in order to gain credit with his chief in Washington. Bond hoped that at any rate he would bring the equipment he had asked for before he left London through Section A, who looked after the liaison with C.I.A. This was the latest transmitter and receiver for agents in the field, so that the two of them could be independent of cable offices and have instant communication with London and Washington, and the most modern portable Geiger counters for operating both on land and under water. One of the chief virtues of C.I.A., in Bond’s estimation, was the excellence of their equipment, and he had no false pride about borrowing from them.
New Providence, the island containing Nassau, the capital of the Bahamas, is a drab sandy slab of land fringed with some of the most beautiful beaches in the world. But the interior is nothing but a waste of low-lying scrub, casuarinas, mastic, and poison-wood with a large brackish lake at the western end. There are birds and tropical flowers and palm trees, imported fully grown from Florida, in the beautiful gardens of the millionaires round the coast, but in the middle of the island there is nothing to attract the eye but the skeleton fingers of spidery windmill pumps sticking up above the pine barrens, and Bond spent the ride to the airport reviewing the morning.
