“Yes. Walther PPK in a Burns Martin holster.”
“Right, give me the number. I’ve got a blank licence here. If that gets back to me it’s quite okay. I’ve got a story for it.”
Bond took out his gun and read off the number. Colonel Johns filled in the form and pushed it over.
“Now then, maps. Here’s a local Esso map that’s all you need to get you to the area.” Colonel Johns got up and walked round with the map to Bond and spread it out. “You take this route 17 back to Montreal, get on to 37 over the bridge at St Anne’s and then over the river again on to 7. Follow 7 on down to Pike River. Get on 52 at Stanbridge. Turn right in Stanbridge for Frelighsburg and leave the car in a garage there. Good roads all the way. Whole trip shouldn’t take you more than five hours including stops. Okay? Now this is where you’ve got to get things right. Make it that you get to Frelighsburg around three a.m. Garage-hand’ll be half asleep and you’ll be able to get the gear out of the boot and move off without him noticing even if you were a double-headed Chinaman.” Colonel Johns went back to his chair and took two more pieces of paper off the file. The first was a scrap of pencilled map, the other a section of aerial photograph. He said, looking seriously at Bond: “Now, here are the only inflammable things you’ll be carrying and I’ve got to rely on you getting rid of them just as soon as they’ve been used, or at once if there’s a chance of you getting into trouble. This,” he pushed the paper over, “is a rough sketch of an old smuggling route from Prohibition days. It’s not used now or I wouldn’t recommend it.” Colonel Johns smiled sourly. “You might find some rough customers coming over in the opposite direction, and they’re apt to shoot and not even ask questions afterwards – crooks, druggers, white-slavers – but nowadays they mostly travel up by Viscount. This route was used for runners between Franklin, just over the Derby Line, and Frelighsburg. You follow this path through the foothills, and you detour Franklin and get into the start of the Green Mountains. There it’s all Vermont spruce and pine with a bit of maple, and you can stay inside that stuff for months and not see a soul. You get across country here, over a couple of highways, and you leave Enosburg Falls to the west. Then you’re over a steep range and down into the top of the valley you want. The cross is Echo Lake and, judging from the photographs, I’d be inclined to come down on top of it from the east. Got it?”
“What’s the distance? About ten miles?”
“Ten and a half. Take you about three hours from Frelighsburg if you don’t lose your way, so you’ll be in sight of the place around six and have about an hour’s light to help you over the last stretch.” Colonel Johns pushed over the square of aerial photograph. It was a central cut from the one Bond had seen in London. It showed a long low range of well-kept buildings made of cut stone. The roofs were of slate, and there was a glimpse of graceful bow windows and a covered patio. A dust road ran past the front door and on this side were garages and what appeared to be kennels. On the garden side was a stone flagged terrace with a flowered border, and beyond this two or three acres of trim lawn stretched down to the edge of the small lake. The lake appeared to have been artificially created with a deep stone dam. There was a group of wrought-iron garden furniture where the dam wall left the bank and, halfway along the wall, a diving-board and a ladder to climb out of the lake. Beyond the lake the forest rose steeply up. It was from this side that Colonel Johns suggested an approach. There were no people in the photograph, but on the stone flags in front of the patio was a quantity of expensive-looking aluminium garden furniture and a central glass table with drinks. Bond remembered that the larger photograph had shown a tennis court in the garden and on the other side of the road the trim white fences and grazing horses of a stud farm. Echo Lake looked what it was – the luxurious retreat, in deep country, well away from atom bomb targets, of a millionaire who liked privacy and could probably offset a lot of his running expenses against the stud farm and an occasional good let. It would be an admirable refuge for a man who had had ten steamy years of Caribbean politics and who needed a rest to recharge his batteries. The lake was also convenient for washing blood off hands.