Birmingham; a third `To Laura from her many friends at the office. You will always be remembered.' At the end of this little row, one single flower lay like a boutonniere, the stem wrapped in crisp Cellophane, and the flower backed by green fronds. The flower itself was enough to cause interest. It was a rose, but a rose that neither Fredericka nor Bond had ever seen before: a luminous white, the colour intense in its depth, and the most extraordinary thing about the bloom was that each of the petals had a tip, blood red and almost symmetrical. It was as though someone had taken a very beautiful white rose and carefully painted the spots of blood identically at the end of each petal. So odd was the effect that Bond even leaned forward and brushed it with his fingertips to make certain it was real, and not some reproduced piece of plastic. It was real enough, and he bent again to read the card.
The card was plain. No florist's address or little picture: just a plain oblong of white, with a carefully written message. The copperplate writing reminded him of M for a moment, then the words suddenly seemed very familiar. He had read them and, it struck him that he had also seen a description of this same kind of rose at least four times before. The message was very simple `This is how it must end. Goodbye.
He stood, looking at the single flower, more eloquent than any wreath or spray, then he turned to Fredericka. `I think we should go, my dear. I have something to show you back in London. After that it might be the right time for us to visit Germany.' `The Rhineland?' Bond nodded, took her arm and walked briskly back to his car. He knew that he had found in this extraordinary rose a tangible link between the death of Laura March and the four assassinations of that one week of deaths.
CHAPTER NINE
RICHARD'S HIMSELF AGAIN
The road had been hewn out of the rock, twisting and turning so that one minute they were gazing down an almost sheer drop into the greeny blue waters of the Rhine, and at others they seemed to be pressed against great cuttings, the rough walls of natural stone rising on either side of them. They came upon their first view of the castle suddenly, following a long gentle bend and on to a kilometer of straight road, the Schloss Drache appearing below them like some kind of trick, an illusion, for the castle seemed also to have been cut from the rock itself: a Mount Rushmore in which people lived.
`Bigger than the one at Disneyland,' Bond said quietly, and Fredericka reached out, putting her hand over his for a second, as the late summer afternoon sun hit one of the turrets, glancing off the windows, flashing light from the castle to the river, as though someone within had directed a prismatic beam directly on to the water.
The legends of the Rhine passed quickly through Bond's mind-the legend of the nymph, Lorelei; or the Rhinemaidens, and their hoard of gold.
Time seemed to stand still, and it was hard to believe that only forty-eight hours ago they had driven away from Laura March's lonely funeral on England's south coast, as though the hounds of hell were on their heels.
They made it back to the King's Road in record time, the white Saab 9000 CD Turbo whining through the New Forest and then on to the M3
motorway, Bond breaking the speed limit whenever it seemed safe, driving hard and using every ounce of skill he could muster. The hybrid rose with its strange message ran in circles around his brain, stirring another memory, only half-caught and almost out of reach.
The moment they walked into the apartment he retrieved his briefcase from its hiding place in the compartment behind the wainscot in his bedroom, opened it and removed the files, which had so conveniently found their way into his safe back at the office. He carried the folders through to the sitting-room and began to pore over them.
Fredericka took her cue and disappeared into the kitchen, making tea, hot and very strong, which Bond sipped as he went through the flimsy pages, searching, making notes here and there. He found what he wanted in the files on Generale Claudio Carrousso `S assassination, and then, again, in the papers referring to Archie Shaw. The other two the Russian, Pavel Gruskochev, and the CIA man, Mark Fish required further checking.
He called an anonymous number in Paris, and waited while his contact went through the more recent information they had on the Gruskochev killing. Bond nodded and smiled, making a note on his file as the data was read quietly to him from an office not far from the Champs Elyse'es.
He then called Washington, went through a little game of telephone tag, and finally tracked down the man he wanted, who was dining out, in Arlington, Virginia, with a friend from the Pentagon. The man in Washington asked how quickly he needed the information, and was told yesterday. `If it really is that important, I'll go out to Langley and call you back,' he said, adding that Bond was about the only person in the world he would do something like this for. An hour later the telephone rang and Bond again smiled to himself as he made notes, the telephone pressed hard against his ear.
`Just what I wanted to hear,' he told the caller. `I owe you one.
`And I'll collect. The Washington contact closed the line, and drove back to the house in Arlington where his friend from the Pentagon waited patiently she was a G3, twenty-eight years old and with the greatest legs this side of New York.
Bond then dialled a number in Chalfont St Giles, greeting an old friend he had not seen for almost two years. After the usual pleasantries, the talk turned to the growing of hybrid roses. The conversation lasted for almost thirty minutes.
Only when he had finished talking on the phone, did he call Fredericka from where she was reading a paperback in the bedroom.
`So, Sherlock,' she dropped gracefully on to the big leather couch. `Have you found the secret of life and death?' `Enough to tie a few knots together, and enough to put at least one name in the frame, as they say on those TV police dramas. Look. ` He came over and sat close beside her, the four files on his lap.
`When it comes to murder or assassination, one of the standard procedures as you must know is the general surveillance of those who come to the victim's funeral. There were people from both my service and the Security Service there today. You saw the MIS couple, my guys were not so obvious, but they were around. Again, as you know, the job is to identify everyone who comes to pay their respects, and, when it's all over, someone else usually goes through the so-called floral tributes.
Notes are kept regarding the messages, and then the sources are tracked down if necessary. That's straightforward stuff as far as the police, and the security and intelligence services are concerned.
`Of course. Yes, it's standard.' `You saw that hybrid rose. Odd.
I've never seen anything quite so perfect. The petals all seemed identical, and the blood-red tips could have been painted on, they were so symmetrical. Then there was the message which would strike the dimmest probationary detective as odd.
'`This is the way it must end. Goodbye,'' she muttered, almost under her breath. `Sure, a murderer's message, perhaps? Or a bit of sentiment..
`No, you were right the first time. Those four assassinations which took place last week, just before Laura was killed. -`Yes?' `Would it surprise you that the same hybrid rose, with the same message, turned up at each of the funerals? The General in Rome; our MP, here in London; old Pavel in Paris, and the CIA man, Fish, in Washington. In the case of the MP, Shaw, and the Russian, it was made clear that there should be no flowers, yet the rose turned up at each interment..
`And the same message? Exactly the same message?' `Exactly. Word for word, and nobody has been able to trace the source. They simply appeared at the graveside, or the crematoriums, as if by magic.
There is one tiny clue and it doesn't mean much.
In Paris, the undertaker saw a young boy thirteen or fourteen years old hanging around the graveside before the service. Again, in Washington, there was a schoolgirl, early teens, seen in the funeral home, looking at the flowers.' `Kids paid to drop off the rose?' `That's what I would go for.
`And the message was exactly the same yes, I asked before.
`Word for word. A calling card left by the killer, or killers.
It's like a terrorist group claiming responsibility. Someone, or some organization, is telling us that, not only did they murder Laura, but also the four high-profile people as well.' `And the rose? I heard you talking to some expert about roses.' He paused, closing the files, and piling them neatly on his knees. `That's the most interesting piece of information. The man I spoke to is probably the world's greatest expert on roses. He's responsible for at least twelve new varieties himself, and what he doesn't know about other growers could be written on a pin head.
`He gave you a name? It's a well-known rose?' `Not well known, but he knows of one person who's been
