It was a soft, muffled ticking, unhurried, metallic. And it came from the direction of the sideboard.
‘Tick-tock… tick-tock… tick-tock.’
Without a moment’s hesitation, without caring that he looked a fool, he dived to the floor behind his armchair and crouched, all his senses focused on the noise from the square parcel. ‘Steady,’ he said to himself. ‘Don’t be an idiot. It’s just a clock.’ But why a clock? Why should he be given a clock? Who by?
‘Tick-tock… tick-tock… tick-tock.’
It had become a huge noise against the silence of the room. It seemed to be keeping time with the thumping of Bond’s heart. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. That Voodoo stuff of Leigh Fermor’s has put your nerves on edge. Those drums…’
‘Tick-tock… tick-tock… tick-‘
And then, suddenly, the alarm went off with a deep, melodious, urgent summons.
‘Tongtougtongtongtongtong…’
Bond’s muscles relaxed. His cigarette was burning a hole in the carpet. He picked it up and put it in his mouth. Bombs in alarm clocks go off when the hammer first comes down on the alarm. The hammer hits a pin in a detonator, the detonator fires the explosive and WHAM…
Bond raised his head above the back of the chair and watched the parcel.
‘Tongtongtongtongtong…’
The muffled gonging went on for half a minute, then it started to slow down.
‘tong . . tong… tong… tong…tong…
‘C-R-A-C-K…’
It was not louder than a 12-bore cartridge, but in the confined space it was an impressive explosion.
The parcel, in tatters, had fallen to the ground. The glasses and bottles on the sideboard were smashed and there was a black smudge of smoke on the grey wall behind them. Some pieces of glass tinkled on to the floor. There was a strong smell of gunpowder in the room.
Bond got slowly to his feet. He went to the window and opened it. Then he dialled Dexter’s number. He spoke levelly.
‘Pineapple… No, a small one… only some glasses… okay, thanks… of course not… ‘bye.’
He skirted the debris, walked through the small lobby to the door leading into the passage, opened it, hung the DON’T DISTURB sign outside, locked it, and went through into his bedroom.
By the time he had finished dressing there was a knock on the door.
‘Who is it?” he called.
‘Okay. Dexter.’
Dexter hustled in, followed by a sallow young man with a black box under his arm.
‘Trippe, from Sabotage,’ announced Dexter.
They shook hands and the young man at once went on his knees beside the charred remnants of the parcel.
He opened his box and took out some rubber gloves and a handful of dentist’s forceps. With his tools he painstakingly extracted small bits of metal and glass from the charred parcel and laid them out on a broad sheet of blotting paper from the writing-desk.
While he worked, he asked Bond what had happened.
‘About a half-minute alarm? I see. Hullo, what’s this?’ He delicately extracted a small aluminium container such as is used for exposed film. He put it aside.
After a few minutes he sat up on his haunches.
‘Half-minute acid capsule,’ he announced. ‘Broken by the first hammer-stroke of the alarm. Acid eats through thin copper wire. Thirty seconds later wire breaks, releases plunger on to cap of this.’ He held up the base of a cartridge. ‘4-bore elephant gun. Black powder. Blank. No shot. Lucky it wasn’t a grenade. Plenty of room in the parcel. You’d have been damaged. Now let’s have a look at this.’ He picked up the aluminium cylinder, unscrewed it, extracted a small roll of paper, and unravelled it with his forceps.
He carefully flattened it out on the carpet, holding its corners down with four tools from his black box. It contained three typewritten sentences. Bond and Dexter bent forward.
‘THE HEART OF THIS CLOCK HAS STOPPED TICKING,’ they read. ‘THE BEATS OF YOUR OWN HEART ARE NUMBERED, I KNOW THAT NUMBER AND I HAVE STARTED TO COUNT.’
The message was signed ‘1234567…?’ They stood up.
‘Hm,’ said Bond. ‘Bogeyman stuff.’
‘But how the hell did he know you were here?’ asked Dexter.
Bond told him of the black sedan on 55th Street.
‘But the point is,’ said Bond, ‘how did he know what I was here for? Shows he’s got Washington pretty well sewn up. Must be a leak the size of the Grand Canyon somewhere.’