Bond whistled softly.
‘In short,’ continued M, ‘we suspect that this Jamaican treasure is being used to finance the Soviet espionage system, or an important part of it, in America. And our suspicion becomes a certainty when I tell you who this Mr. Big is.’
Bond waited, his eyes fixed on M’s.
‘Mr. Big,’ said M, weighing his words, ‘is probably the most powerful negro criminal in the world. He is,’ and he enumerated carefully,’ the head of the Black Widow Voodoo cult and believed by that cult to be the Baron Samedi himself. (You’ll find all about that here,’ he tapped the folder, ‘and it’ll frighten the daylights out of you.) He is also a Soviet agent. And finally he is, and this will particularly interest you, Bond, a known member of SMERSH.’
‘Yes,’ said Bond slowly, ‘I see now.’
‘Quite a case,’ said M, looking keenly at him. ‘And quite a man, this Mr. Big.’
‘I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a great negro criminal before,’ said Bond, ‘Chinamen, of course, the men behind the opium trade. There’ve been some big-time Japs, mostly in pearls and drugs. Plenty of negroes mixed up in diamonds and gold in Africa, but always in a small way. They don’t seem to take to big business. Pretty law-abiding chaps I should have thought except when they’ve drunk too much.’
‘Our man’s a bit of an exception,’ said M. ‘He’s not pure negro. Born in Haiti. Good dose of French blood. Trained in Moscow, too, as you’ll see from the file. And the negro races are just beginning to throw up geniuses in all the professions — scientists, doctors, writers. It’s about time they turned out a great criminal. After all, there are 250,000,000 of them in the world. Nearly a third of the white population. They’ve got plenty of brains and ability and guts. And now Moscow’s taught one of them the technique.’
‘I’d like to meet him,’ said Bond. Then he added, mildly, ‘I’d like to meet any member of SMERSH.’
‘All right then, Bond. Take it away.’ M handed him the thick brown folder. ‘Talk it over with Plender and Damon. Be ready to start in a week. It’s a joint CIA and FBI job. For God’s sake don’t step on the FBI’s toes. Covered with corns. Good luck.’
Bond had gone straight down to Commander Damon, Head of Station A, an alert Canadian who controlled the link with the Central Intelligence Agency, America’s Secret Service.
Damon looked up from his desk. ‘I see you’ve bought it,’ he said, looking at the folder. ‘Thought you would. Sit down,’ he waved to an armchair beside the electric fire. ‘When you’ve waded through it all, I’ll fill in the gaps.’
CHAPTER III
A VISITING-CARD
AND now it was ten days later and the talk with Dexter and Leiter had not added much, reflected Bond as he awoke slowly and luxuriously in his bedroom at the St. Regis the morning after his arrival in New York.
Dexter had had plenty of detail on Mr. Big, but nothing that threw any new light on the case. Mr. Big was forty-five years old, born in Haiti, half negro and half French. Because of the initial letters of his fanciful name, Buonaparte Ignace Gallia, and because of his huge height and bulk, he came to be called, even as a youth, ‘Big Boy’ or just ‘Big’. Later this became ‘The Big Man’ or ‘Mr. Big’, and his real names lingered only on a parish register in Haiti and on his dossier with the FBI. He had no known vices except women, whom he consumed in quantities. He didn’t drink or smoke .and his only Achilles heel appeared to be a chronic heart disease which had, in recent years, imparted a greyish tinge to his skin.
The Big Boy had been initiated into Voodoo as a child, earned his living as a truck-driver in Port au Prince, then emigrated to America and worked successfully for a hi-jacking team in the Legs Diamond gang. With the end of Prohibition he had moved to Harlem and bought half-shares in a small nightclub and a string of coloured call-girls. His partner was found in a barrel of cement in the Harlem River in 1938 and Mr. Big automatically became sole proprietor of the business. He was called up in 1943 and, because of his excellent French, came to the notice of the Office of Strategic Services, the wartime secret service of America, who trained him with great thoroughness and put him into Marseilles as an agent against the Petain collaborationists. He merged easily with African negro dock-hands, and worked well, providing good and accurate naval intelligence. He operated closely with a Soviet spy who was doing a similar job for the Russians. At the end of the war he was demobilized in France (and decorated by the Americans and the French) and then he disappeared for five years, probably to Moscow. He returned to Harlem in 1950 and soon came to the notice of the FBI as a suspected Soviet agent. But he never incriminated himself or fell into any of the traps laid by the FBI. He bought up three nightclubs and a prosperous chain of Harlem brothels. He seemed to have unlimited funds and paid all his lieutenants a flat rate of twenty thousand dollars a year. Accordingly, and as a result of weeding by murder, he was expertly and diligently served. He was known to have originated an underground Voodoo temple in Harlem and to have established a link between it and the main cult in Haiti. The rumour had started that he was the Zombie or living corpse of Baron Samedi himself, the dreaded Prince of Darkness, and he fostered the story so that now it was accepted through all the lower strata of the negro world. As a result, he commanded real fear, strongly substantiated by the immediate and often mysterious deaths of anyone who crossed him or disobeyed his orders.