anecdotes about pre-war naval life at the Pacific Station, that he had had the time and the kindness to thank and encourage Mrs Hammond for her self-dedication to M during his illness. Bond made a muffled sound between a sob and a snarl. This act, this casual sweeping aside of two lives just to save trouble - there were half a dozen ways in which the Hammonds could have been neutralized with the minimum of violence and without risk to the enemy - was not to be endured. The men who had done it were going to die.
'It's a good job you didn't fall in with my suggestion about coming along here tonight, Bill,' said Bond.
Tanner nodded without speaking. Then the two turned away and left the bodies to the doctor and the police experts. Not that any of them was expected to add to what was already known or self-evident. The Hammonds' fate was an open book. There remained, of course, the question of the shooting of the thin-faced man.
In M's study a minute later, Bond and Tanner decided to start with that. Each tacitly avoiding the straight-backed Hepplewhite armchair where M habitually sat, they had settled themselves on either side of the low stone fireplace that was bare and swept clean at this time of the year.
'Perhaps his boss had him knocked off in a fit of rage,' suggested Tanner. 'By what you told me on the way here our dead friend didn't handle himself too cleverly in the scrap upstairs. Could be considered to have helped to let you escape, anyway. But then these people don't sound as if they're given to fits of rage. Of course, a man with a bloody nose is to a certain extent conspicuous. Would that have been enough to earn him a bullet? Rather frightening if it was.'
Before replying, Bond picked up his Scotch and soda from the silver tray that sat on a low table between the two men. He had had to harden his heart to bring in the tray from the kitchen, where Hammond, as on previous Tuesdays, had had it ready for his arrival.
'That would fit the airport theory.' Bond drank deeply and gratefully. 'It would be a big risk already to walk M through Immigration, passing him off if necessary as under the weather or whatever they had lined up. Presumably it would have been a still bigger risk if they'd managed to persuade me to join the party. Or would it? Anyway, we can leave that for now. The point is that, whatever the risk, it was one they'd been able to prepare for to the _n__th degree. But here was something they couldn't have taken into account. A man who'd clearly just been in some sort of serious fight would be just the thing to arouse that fatal flicker of official curiosity. Yes, it fits. And yet...'
Tanner glanced at him mutely and fumbled for a cigarette.
'I can't help feeling there's something else to it. Some added point. After all, why leave him here? That's making us a present of God knows how much information. You'd have expected them at least to try to hide the body.'
'They hadn't time,' said Tanner, looking at his watch. 'This must all have been planned to the minute. And talking of time, when are they going to get that damned telephone repaired? We'd better start looking for - '
'No rush there. I wish there were. With the shifts changed an hour or more ago Spence's job won't be easy. He's having to rout out the people who were on duty earlier on. And that Security staff is tiny. They'll be up to their eyebrows pushing the descriptions out to all the other airports. And in any case...'
A police constable in shirt-sleeves knocked and entered. 'Phone's in order, sir,' he said. 'And London Airport Security informed as you requested.'
'Thank you.' When the man had gone, Bill Tanner put his glass of Scotch down with a slam. 'It's all hopeless anyway,' he said with sudden violence. 'Let's get moving, James. Every sort of important person has got to be collected and told about this, and fast. What are we hanging about here for?'
'If we move we're off the telephone. And we've got to be sure there's nothing more this end. The police will find it if there is. That Inspector Crawford's a competent chap. What do you mean anyway, hopeless? With a call gone out to the seaports and - '
'Look, James.' Tanner got up and began pacing the faded Axminster rug. He studied his watch again. 'They've had something like four hours start now... '
Bond drew in his breath and bit his lip hard. 'Christ, you don't know how I wish...'
'Don't be a fool, man. Nobody could have done more than you did. Pull yourself together and listen to me.'
'Sorry, Bill.'
'That's better. Now. Four hours. They wouldn't have counted on much more whatever had happened. They'll have cut it as fine as they dared in the first phase. If they took him out by aeroplane, then with the airport not much more than down the road from here they'd have been in the air in well under an hour. Another hour at the most to Orly or Amsterdam, or these days as far as Marseilles - and they _must__ have gone somewhere comparatively near, they wouldn't have dared spend six or eight hours in transit and risk being met by the wrong people at the far end.... Well then. That's two hours. Another half hour at the outside for Customs and Immigration. By now they could be, what, seventy, eighty miles from their touchdown? Or out at sea?'
'What makes you think they aren't in East Berlin?' asked Bond flatly. 'Or most of the way to Moscow?'
'I don't know.' With shaking fingers, Tanner chain-lit another cigarette and thrust his hand through his thinning grey hair. 'It doesn't sound like that lot. Too grown-up these days. That's what I think, anyway. Perhaps it's only what I hope.'
Bond had nothing to say.
'Perhaps they haven't taken him out at all. That might be their best bet. Hole up with him in Westmorland or somewhere and operate their plot from a derelict cottage. Whatever the hell their plot may be. No doubt we shall find out in their own good time. We've had it, James. We've lost him.'
The telephone rang noisily from its alcove in the hall (M would not have the hated instrument where he could see it). Tanner jumped up.
'I'll take it. You relax.'
Bond lay back in his chair, half-listening to the intermittent drone of Tanner's voice in the alcove. The muffled noises of the police at work, their deliberate footsteps, sounded false, out of key. The study where Bond sat - he noticed for the first time M's old briar pipe lying in a copper ashtray - looked even more museum-like than earlier. It was as if M had left not hours before, but weeks or months. A derelict stage-set rather than a museum. Bond had the uneasy fancy that if he got up and pushed his hand at the wall, what was supposed to be stone would
