He nodded. ‘I’m to slog around passing messages for you, and I’ve got another little job if you can manage it.’
‘I hope you’ve got somebody watching that limo.’ Bond took the photograph. ‘Around here it could be on bricks by the time you get back.’
Rushia chuckled. ‘I sure fooled them. I let the air outa the tyres.’
‘Myra,’ Bond walked over to where she sat, holding the photograph out to her, ‘you recognise this girl?’
She had a very thin hand which shook slightly as she took the photograph and peered at it as though it were a holy relic.
‘No. No, I don’t recognise her. Should I?’
‘Only if it happened to be your old friend Jenny Mo.’
‘Oh, that’s not Jenny. She was rather intense-looking and wore big, black-rimmed glasses.’
‘Good.’ Bond handed the picture back to Rushia. ‘Just have this destroyed, my good fellow. Oh, and we’ll be heading for JFK tomorrow night. Nine fifteen to the city of Saint Francis.’
‘Make a nice change. I’ll fix it, even if they have to offload some poor tourist.’ He ran a long finger down the side of his nose. ‘A word in private, your honour.’
They stepped over to the door.
‘Got a couple of Mickey Finns here for the lady.’ Ed spoke out of the corner of his mouth, a parody of every Hollywood jail movie.
‘How fast, and how long?’
‘’Bout two minutes and twenty-four hours.’
‘Okay. Would you tell whoever’s going to clean up that we will be away by seven tonight.’
‘Anything else I can do? Massage your back? Wash the dishes? Sing a coupla choruses of “Oh dear, what a calamity”?’
‘Just keep doing what you’re good at, Ed.’ Bond took the pills in their little silver foil packet and showed him out of the door.
‘Time for sleep,’ he announced when Rushia had finally gone. ‘Get Myra to bed, then call me in. You’re pretty wired – strung up – Myra. I’ve got a couple of pills that will make certain you’ll rest.’
She looked up in alarm. ‘You’re not going to poison me! No!’
‘NO!’ Chi-Chi said firmly. ‘Come on, let’s get you to bed, Myra. Nobody’s going to poison you. We all need rest, and you’re going to have problems sleeping.’
Twenty minutes later, Chi-Chi came out of the master bedroom. ‘Give me a glass of water, James. I think she’ll let me do it.’
‘I wish it was an injection. Safer. But make sure she swallows them. Should take two minutes max.’
It took under sixty seconds, Chi-Chi told him when she came back. ‘Went out like a candle in a hurricane.’
‘Well, we’ve certainly had a long bedtime story tonight. I wonder how much of it was a fairytale?’
Chi-Chi smiled up at Bond, resting a hand on his shoulder. ‘I suppose we’ll find out eventually, but now, husband, how about bed?’
‘You hussy.’ Bond smiled down at her. ‘But can I take a raincheck? I have one hell of a headache.’
She pouted. ‘Oh, I really thought we worked well as a team.’
‘We do, but I’ll feel safer if I lie across the door with a gun in my hand.’
‘Okay, but you don’t know what you’re missing.’
‘Oh, I think I do.’
Myra was still dead to the world when they left the apartment shortly before seven that night. Both had managed eight hours of sleep, Chi-Chi having taken over from Bond to, as he put it, lie across the door. They had eaten, showered and changed. Just before leaving, Bond stripped down his ASP 9mm and unlocked the shielded false bottom of the briefcase – his usual way of carrying arms illegally through airport security.
They had called for a limo from the nearby firm of Ryan & Sons whom Bond had used on other visits to New York. They were discreet, punctual and always friendly. They also did not know his real name, though all the drivers recognised his face. Tonight they had drawn the Ryan son, George, who pleasantly spent the ride out to JFK telling them the city was going to the dogs, how parts of the roadways were caving in, how a friend had been mugged and how the police didn’t seem to do much about it. ‘Look,’ he pointed out of the window, ‘see that guy there with the TV on his shoulder? Betcha he never bought that. He’s stealing that and nobody’ll do anything about it.’
Bond was glad to see Rushia’s car not too far behind them. He leaned forward. ‘George, you mind if I close the partition?’
‘You go ahead, sir. You do what you like. I won’t peek!’ The driver gave a jovial chuckle.
Bond leaned back, his shoulder touching Chi-Chi’s shoulder: ‘Now, tell me the story of your life,’ he said with a smile.
‘Didn’t they give you my dossier? It’s all in there.’
‘They told me you were a Cantonese speaker . . .’
‘And a few dialects. You see, they should have given you my file.’
‘Okay. So you tell me.’
‘Fourth generation American. Joined the US Navy to see the world and saw nothing but the inside of offices. They gave me a commission. My father was very proud, but the man I was going to marry was humiliated – it was some foolish business to do with class – and he would not go through with the contract.’
‘And you still love him?’
‘Until quite recently, yes. Now I see how foolish I was even to grieve. I know that it was my vanity crying, not my heart.’
‘They tell me it takes three years to get over a really broken heart and accept the facts.’
‘You are a chauvinist pig, James. For men, maybe only three years; for women it can be much longer – if ever.’
He laid a hand on her arm. ‘You may be right, my dear. A very wise man once told me that if a woman stopped loving you, there was nothing you could do about it except put your hands in your pockets and walk away. I believe the same is also true for women.’
‘It’s a blow to pride, to vanity. But that’s all one now. You still want to hear my life story?’
‘You’re only giving me the later parts.’
‘Okay, maybe I don’t want you to know about my terrible teenage days when I ran riot with friends, smoked pot, stayed out all night in line for a Who concert, lost my virginity at sixteen . . .’
‘Beat you by almost eighteen months.’ Though Bond said it lightly enough, he was slightly concerned about Chi-Chi. He had known many good women operatives, but they only remained good if they did not carry around a great load of what he liked to think of as ‘emotional baggage’. He hoped that Sue Chi-Ho did not have a cabin trunk of emotions chained to her ankle. At last he said, ‘Well, you got through that. We all go through it.’
‘Some never come out the other side.’ She turned down the corners of what Bond appreciated as a wicked little mouth. ‘I had ten friends –
Bond nodded. Looking at her now he realised, as though for the first time, that beneath the fragility she was as hard as tempered steel. ‘The drug problem’s going to be the downfall of many empires, just as lead poisoning was the trigger to the fall of the Roman Empire. But, as to your own adolescent difficulties, you
‘Thank you.’ Was there a hint of uncertainty in her voice?
‘So you were commissioned?’ he prompted.
‘Naval Intelligence for two years. Then an Agency talent spotter gave me an audition. The rest, as they say, is history.’ She quite suddenly looked up at Bond, her eyes mirroring a hint of anxiety. ‘This business? It is going to be all right, James, isn’t it?’
‘As long as you remember to call me Peter, and don’t forget you’re Jenny . . .’
‘And married to you, yes.’ She ran the tip of her tongue along the lips which Bond was finding more attractive every minute. He looked up to see they were just turning on to the airport ramp.
