Bond laughed. “If you absolutely insist,” he said. “And now listen, in exchange, I want you to try and remember anything you can about ABC and the London end of this business. That telephone number. And anything else. I’ll tell you what it’s all about and why I’m interested as soon as I can, but in the meantime you’ve just got to trust me. Is it a deal?”
“Oh, sure,” said the girl indifferently, as if all that side of her life had lost its importance; and for ten minutes Bond questioned her minutely, but except for small details, fruitlessly, about the ABC routine.
Then he put down the receiver and rang for the steward and ordered some dinner and sat down to write the long report which he would have to transpose into code and send off that night.
The ‘Metal Mike’ took the ship quietly on into the darkness and the small township of three thousand five hundred souls settled down to the five days of its life in which there would be all the happenings natural to any other sizeable community-burglaries, fights, seductions, drunkenness, cheating; perhaps a birth or two, the chance of a suicide and, in a hundred crossings, perhaps even a murder.
As the iron town loped easily along the broad Atlantic swell and the soft night wind thrummed and moaned in the masthead, the radio aerials were already transmitting the morse of the duty operator to the listening ear of Portishead.
And what the duty operator was sending at exactly ten pm Eastern Standard Time, Was a cable addressed: ABC, CARE HOUSE OF DIAMONDS, HATTON GARDEN, LONDON, which Said : PARTIES LOCATED STOP IF MATTER REQUIRES DRASTIC SOLUTION ESSENTIAL YOU STATE PRICE PAYABLE IN DOLLARS. The Signature Was WINTER.
An hour later, while the Queen Elizabeth’s operator was sighing at the thought of having to transmit five hundred five-letter groups addressed: THE MANAGING DIRECTOR, UNIVERSAL EXPORT, REGENTS PARK, LONDON, Portishead radio was sending a short cable addressed : WINTER FIRST CLASS PASSENGER QUEEN ELIZABETH, which said : DESIRE TIDY SPEEDY CONCLUSION OF CASE REPEAT CASE STOP WILL PAY TWENTY GRAND STOP WILL PERSONALLY HANDLE OTHER SUBJECT ON ARRIVAL LONDON CONFIRM ABC.
And the operator looked up Winter in the passenger list and put the message in an envelope and sent it down to a cabin on A deck, the deck below Bond and the girl, where two men were playing gin-rummy in their shirt-sleeves, and as the steward left the cabin he heard the fat man say cryptically to the man with white hair, “Whaddya know, Booful! It’s twenty Grand for a rub these days, Boy-oh-boy!”
It was not until the third day out that Bond and Tiffany made a date to meet for cocktails in the Observation Lounge and later to have dinner in the Veranda Grill. At midday the weather was dead calm, and after lunch in his cabin Bond had got a peremptory message in a round girlish hand on a sheet of the ship’s writing paper. It said, ‘Fix a rendez-me today. Fail not,’ and Bond’s hand had gone at once to the telephone.
They were thirsty for each other’s company after the three days’ separation, but Tiffany’s defences were up when she joined him at the obscure corner table he had chosen in the gleaming semi-circular cocktail bar in the bows.
“What kind of a table’s this?” she inquired sarcastically. “You ashamed of me or something? Here I put on the best those Hollywood pansies can dream up and you hide me away like I was
Miss Rheingold 1914.1 want to have myself some fun on this old paddleboat and you put me in a corner as if I was catching.”
“That’s about it,”, said Bond. “All you want to do is put the other men’s temperatures up.”
“What d’you expect a girl to do on the Queen Elizabeth? Fish?”
• Bond laughed. He signalled to the waiter and ordered Vodka dry Martinis with lemon peel. “I could give you one alternative.”
“Dear Diary,” said the girl, “having wonderful time with handsome Englishman. Trouble is, he’s after my family jewels. What do I do? Yours truly, puzzled.” Then suddenly she leant over and put her hand on his. “Listen, you Bond person,” she said. “I’m as happy as a cricket. I love being here. I love being with you. And I love this nice dark table where no one can see me holding your hand. Don’t mind my talk. I just can’t get over being so happy. Don’t mind my silly jokes, will you?”