and stuck out at two corners and the tiny windows were sunk back in the walls like old man’s eyes. Six feet of snow on the roof gave it the appearance of some exotic gateau.
Bond was glad to see that the snow around the door was undisturbed. He took off his skis and tried the door. At first he thought it was locked, but it was merely frozen. He put his shoulder against it and it gave with a sound like a pistol shot Some snow fell on his head and the girl laughed. ‘Careful/ said Bond. ‘I might put you across my knee.’
The girl raised an intrigued eyebrow and Bond wondered if she understood the exact meaning of the expression. She was very pretty and the mornings skiing had rekindled a number of his appetites. Perhaps it had been the Italians and the losing streak at the casino that had made him liverish.
As was his habit when playing roulette, Bond had borrowed the chef’s card and studied the run of the ball since the session opened at three o’clock. He knew that mathematically it meant nothing, but it was his convention to take carcful note of any peculiarities in the run of the wheel and to act upon them. In this instance the card had told him nothing of interest except that five of the last six numbers to come up had been lower than twenty-five. It was Bond’s practice to play always with the wheel and only start on a new tack when zero came up. On this night he had decided to follow the wheel and back the first two dozens. The dozens pay odds of two to one, which meant that for every thousand francs Bond bet he would make a profit of five hundred francs provided that neither zero nor a number higher than twenty-four came up.
On the first throw, the ivory ball had dropped into the twenty-five. The second throw was thirty-two. Bond had made no sign but merely marked his card. The third throw was another twenty-five. Bond had stayed with the first dozens and increased his stake to the maximum.
As he did every time, the croupier had picked up the ball with his right hand, given one of the four spokes of the wheel a controlled clockwise twist with the same hand, and flicked the ball round the outer rim of the wheel anti-clockwise against the spin. The ball had run smoothly at first and then jiggled and joggled happily over the slots as the wheel began to lose momentum. Its carefree progress contrasted with the drawn faces round the table, some of them trying to keep pace with its movement like spectators at a tennis match.
‘Zero!’ Had there been a hint of triumph in that cry? Nobody had been on zero and the table had been cleared in favour of the bank.
So opened one of the least successful gaming sessions Bond had ever known. He had limped away from the tables with Marline Blanchaud in exchange for a total loss of eight thousand francs. Perhaps now was the moment to discover if Mademoiselle Blanchaud could provide adequate recompense for such a loss.
The inside of the hut was sparsely furnished with a few solid wooden chairs and a hewn table. There was a large woodframed fireplace with a fire laid and waiting to be lit, and a two-tier bunk bed, each compartment being of strictly single dimensions. Panicles of dust hung in the descending shaft of sunlight that penetrated one of the small, thick-paned windows, and there was a thick coating of dust on most surfaces. Two tall doors flanked the fireplace and were presumably cupboards.
‘It needs a little money spent on it,' said Bond. ‘Kind of someone to leave us a fire.’
Bond proffered his battered Ronson and enjoyed the line of the girl’s behind as she sat on her haunches to light the fire. Nobody has yet managed to design a ski outfit that enhances the work God put into the female body, but this concealed less than most.
There was a crackle, a flame, a thin, determined column of smoke and then the fire began to draw lustily. The girl rose to him triumphantly. ‘
‘Do they have girl guides in France?'
Again the look of puzzlement. ‘You mean, on the mountains?’
Bond took the girl into his arms and felt her warm, soft breasts against his chest. Soon he would kiss her and make the nipples hard.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I mean something completely different. Girl guides are-' He broke off, staring through the fragment of window not obscured by drifts. He was looking at a perfect field of snow traversed by distant ski tracks weaving down the side of the mountain. Three pairs of ski tracks. Bond’s heart raced. The tracks had not been there when they came. Somebody was coming towards the hut.
Bond pushed the girl away and immediately saw fear in her eyes. She knew. What the hell was he going to do? Certainly not stay here. He looked into the frightened, betraying eyes and threw his arm roughly round the girl’s waist. He snatched her to him so that her lips trembled an inch from his.
‘Might as well find out what you taste like! ’ He kissed her hard and cruelly and hurled her back across the room so that she sprawled dangerously close to the fire she had just lit. Turning his back contemptuously Bond stooped to gaze through the window. The path of the ski tracks was obscured by an outcrop of rock in the foreground. For two hundred yards in front of him there was no sign of movement. The men must be in the hollow behind the rock. He could imagine them briskly side-stepping up the slope, the locomotive spurts of breath escaping from their lips. He turned towards the girl, who was still squatting in the fireplace watching him warily. Get going!
He had taken two steps towards the door when an impulse made him spin round and examine the two cupboards. The first yielded nothing of interest - two folded duvets, tins of
The second was locked.
Bond took his knee to it and then followed through with the whole weight of his foot encased in its Handson ski boot. Splinters of wood burst from the area of the lock and the door crashed open. What Bond saw made him want to be sick. A pretty girl in a transparent laundry bag. Naked. Dead. Her hands tied behind her back. Her body mutilated. Disgusting smears of blood on the thick polythene. Her flesh bruised and swollen.
Bond spun round towards Martine Blanchaud. The expression of stupefied horror on her face saved her life. This was one turn of the wheel she did not know about.
Bond clattered clumsily across the room and threw open the door. The mid-day sun had been strong enough to start the icicles dripping, and a ragged trench mark followed the line of the eaves. Bond snatched his skis, which were propped up against the wall, and threw them down in the snow. Damn! There was ice on one of his boots. He tried to force it into the binding and then hacked savagely with the tip of his stick. The black, hard rime fell away parsimoniously as if being sculpted.
The men must be near now. Bond scraped again and drove his foot down savagely.
It was not the sound of the binding gripping but of a carbine being cocked. Bond ducked instinctively and the shot sprayed him with splinters of wood from the spot where his head had been. One ski was now secure and Bond kicked the other forward and hopped after it so that he did not present a sitting target. He glided on one ski and, catching up with the second, brought his foot down until it made contact with the binding. A second bullet kicked up snow a couple of feet behind him. Bond felt the desperate electricity of fear circulating his body. If he could not get his boot in the binding ... bending forward with his weight agonizingly poised on his right knee, Bond steadied the errant ski and slid the toe of his boot under the expanded C of metal that manipulated the front release mechanism. His heel wavered and then steadied momentarily between the sprung platform of the back restraint. He sucked in his breath and pressed down. The automatic stop resisted and then clicked down. The boot was held.
Bond skate-skied behind a pile of logs buried by the snow and surveyed the open ground before him. There were two men on skis wearing white military-type one-piece suits with hoods. They were both armed with carbines and one of the men was kneeling to take up a better firing position. Even as he ducked back behind the logs a bullet screamed into them, kicking up a flurry of snow. Bond jump-turned and headed for the slope, running at a reverse angle to the one by which he and the girl had reached the hut. He drove his skis against the snow as if they were ice-skates and dropped to the schuss position as soon as he began to pick up speed. That way he made a smaller target and moved faster. There was a pause in which he could hear his heart bearing and then another shot that whistled over his right shoulder. He rose just long enough to turn and then took the steepest line.
Within a second he knew that he had made a mistake.
The shot that sang off his boot buckles had come from below him. The first two men had been beaters driving him towards the third. They must have realized that there was a good chance of them being seen approaching the hut, and had laid their plans accordingly. Once again he, James Bond, had been found wanting. He was skiing into a trap.
