‘That’s what I said.’ Bond took a pace forward. ‘You’ll go to a safe place where nobody’s going to find you. Then I’ll take care of the bastards myself.’
‘Then where you go, I go; until it’s over, one way or another.’
Bond had experienced enough of women to realise that this stubbornness could neither be fought nor reasoned with. He looked at her for a moment, pleased with her slender build and the femininity which lay under the well-cut grey suit set off by a pink blouse and thin gold chain and pendant. The suit looked very French. Paris, he thought, probably Givenchy.
‘Do you have any ideas how we should handle it then, Heather? I do call you Heather don’t I, not Irma?’
‘Heather,’ she murmured very low. After a pause she said, ‘I’m sorry, I called the others by their original names. Yes, I’ve thought of myself as Heather ever since your people sent me out into the real world with a new name. But I have difficulty thinking of the old gang in new guises.’
‘On Cream Cake you were interconscious? I mean, you knew one another? Knew what each target was?’
She gave a brief nod. ‘By real names and by street names. Yes, we were interconscious of each other, of the targets, of our control. No cut-outs. That’s why Emilie and I were together when you picked us off that little beach.’ She hesitated, then frowned, shaking her head. ‘Sorry, I mean Ebbie. Emilie Nikolas is Ebbie now.’
‘Yes, Ebbie Heritage, isn’t it?’
‘That’s correct. We happen to be old friends. I spoke to her this morning.’
‘In Dublin?’
Heather smiled. ‘You are well informed. Yes, in Dublin.’
‘On an open line? You spoke on an open line?’
‘Don’t worry, Mr Bond . . .’
‘James.’
‘Yes. Don’t worry, James, I said only three words. You see, I spent some time with Ebbie before this salon got started. We made a simple code for speaking on an open line. It went,
“Elizabeth is sick”, and the reply, “I’ll be with you this afternoon”.’
‘Meaning?’
‘The same as “How’s your mother”, which was the Cream Cake warning, slipped into a conversation. “Mother” was the trigger: “You’re blown. Take the necessary action.” ’
‘The same as it was five years ago.’
‘Yes, and we’re about to take that necessary action again now. You see, James, I’ve been in Paris. I flew back this morning. On the aeroplane I saw the report of the murders. It was the first I knew of it. Once would have put us on guard, but twice, and with the . . . the tongue . . .’ For the first time she sounded shaken. She swallowed, visibly pulling herself together. ‘The tongues made it certain. It’s a charming warning, isn’t it?’
‘Not subtle.’
‘Warnings and revenge killings are seldom subtle. You know what the Mafia does to adulterers within a family?’
He nodded sharply. ‘It’s not pretty, but it makes its point.’ For an instant he recalled the last time he had heard of such a murder, with the man’s genitalia hacked off.
‘The tongue makes a point too.’
‘Right. Then what does “Elizabeth is sick” mean?’
‘That we’ve been blown. Meet me where arranged.’
‘Which is?’
‘Which is where I’m going, on the Aer Lingus flight from Heathrow at 8.30 tonight.’
‘Dublin?’
Again she nodded. ‘Yes, Dublin. I’ll hire a car there and head for the rendezvous. Ebbie will have been waiting there since this afternoon.’
‘And you did the same for Frank Baisley, or Franz Belzinger? The one known as Jungle?’
She was still tense, but she gave a little smile. ‘He was always a joker. A bit of a risk-taker. His street name had been Wald, German for forest. Now he calls himself Jungle. No, I couldn’t get a message to him because I don’t know where he is.’
‘I do.’
‘Where?’
‘Quite a long way off. Now, tell me where you are meeting Ebbie.’
She hesitated for a second.
‘Come on,’ urged Bond, ‘I’m here to help. I’m coming with you to Dublin anyway. I have to. Where do you plan to meet?’
‘Oh, we decided a long time ago that the best way to hide is in the open. We agreed upon Ashford Castle in County Mayo. It’s the hotel where President Reagan stayed.’
Bond smiled. It was sound professional thinking. The Ashford Castle Hotel is luxurious and expensive, and the last place on earth a hit team would think of looking.
Then he asked, ‘Can we look as though we’re having a business meeting? Do you mind if I use your telephone?’
She sat down behind her long desk and locked the Woodsman in a drawer. Then she spread papers around and pushed the telephone towards him. Bond dialled the Aer Lingus reservation desk at Heathrow and booked himself on flight EI 177, Club Class, in the name of Boldman.
‘My car’s just around the corner,’ he said as he put down the receiver. ‘We’ll leave here about seven o’clock. It’ll be dusk and I presume all your staff will have left.’
She glanced at her neat Cartier watch and her eyebrows rose. ‘They’ll be finished very soon now . . .’
As though on cue, her telephone rang. Bond guessed it was the blonde because Heather said that yes, they should all leave. She was working late with the gentleman who had called and she would make sure that the building was locked. She would see them all in the morning.
As the glowing spring day faded and the grumble of traffic from Piccadilly dwindled, they sat and talked, Bond gently probing her about Cream Cake. He learned quite a lot more than he had gathered from the files that afternoon. Heather Dare held herself responsible for the panic call to all five participants, ‘I’m sorry, Gustav has cancelled dinner.’ She had been working their prime target, Colonel Maxim Smolin, who during that period was the second in command at the HVA. She told him unwittingly a great deal about herself and about the inner workings of Cream Cake, alerting him to a few deceptions left out or excised from the files.
At five to seven he asked if she had a coat, and she nodded, going to the small, built-in wardrobe and slipping into a white trenchcoat that was far too easily identifiable, and very definitely French, for only the French can make raincoats that have flair. He ordered her to lock up the Woodsman. Then, together, they left her office, switching out lights as they went, and into the elevator cage, hissing down to street level. The lights went out of their own accord just as they reached the small ground floor foyer and, as the doors opened onto gloom, Heather screamed and the attacker came at her like a human typhoon.
4
DUCKING AND DIVING
The man who hurled himself into the elevator cage must have thought that Heather was alone. Later Bond realised that all he would have seen from the gloomy foyer would have been the white trenchcoat, for Heather had taken a step forward as the doors swung open. Bond was thrown against the glass side of the cage and, taken by surprise, he was uncertain whether to reach for the pistol or baton. But he could not afford to hesitate. The assailant already had one hand firmly on Heather’s shoulder and was spinning her round, his other arm raised high, holding an object that looked like a large hammer. Desperately fighting to regain his balance as he slithered against the glass, Bond struck out with his right leg, aiming a hard, straight blow with his heel forced forward, in the direction of the intruder’s lower legs. He felt his shoe make contact and heard a muffled grunt as the man missed
