“How did you get here?”
“I flew up to Bennington. Then I walked. Four days. Up through the Green Mountains. I kept out of the way of people. I’m used to this sort of thing. Our house is in the mountains in Jamaica. They’re much more difficult than these. And there are more people, peasants, about in them. Here no one ever seems to walk. They go by car.”
“And what were you going to do then?”
“I’m going to shoot von Hammerstein and walk back to Bennington.” The voice was as casual as if she had said she was going to pick a wild flower.
From down in the valley came the sound of voices. Bond got to his feet and took a quick look through the branches. Three men and two girls had come on to the patio. There was talk and laughter as they pulled out chairs and sat down at the table. One place was left empty at the head of the table between the two girls. Bond took out his telescopic sight and looked through it. The three men were very small and dark. One of them, who smiled all the time and whose clothes looked the cleanest and smartest, would be Gonzales. The other two were low peasant types. They sat together at the foot of the oblong table and took no part in the talk. The girls were swarthy brunettes. They looked like cheap Cuban whores. They wore bright bathing dresses and a lot of gold jewellery, and laughed and chattered like pretty monkeys. The voices were almost clear enough to understand, but they were talking Spanish.
Bond felt the girl near him. She stood a yard behind him. Bond handed her the glass. He said: “The neat little man is called Major Gonzales. The two at the bottom of the table are gunmen. I don’t know who the girls are. Von Hammerstein isn’t there yet.” She took a quick look through the glass and handed it back without comment. Bond wondered if she realised that she had been looking at the murderers of her father and mother.
The two girls had turned and were looking towards the door into the house. One of them called out something that might have been a greeting. A short, square, almost naked man came out into the sunshine. He walked silently past the table to the edge of the flagged terrace facing the lawn and proceeded to go through a five-minute programme of physical drill.
Bond examined the man minutely. He was about five feet four with a boxer’s shoulders and hips, but a stomach that was going to fat. A mat of black hair covered his breasts and shoulder blades, and his arms and legs were thick with it. By contrast, there was not a hair on his face or head and his skull was a glittering whitish yellow with a deep dent at the back that might have been a wound or the scar of a trepanning. The bone structure of the face was that of the conventional Prussian officer – square, hard and thrusting – but the eyes under the naked brows were close-set and piggish, and the large mouth had hideous lips – thick and wet and crimson. He wore nothing but a strip of black material, hardly larger than an athletic support-belt, round his stomach, and a large gold wrist-watch on a gold bracelet. Bond handed the glass to the girl. He was relieved. Von Hammerstein looked just about as unpleasant as M’s dossier said he was.
Bond watched the girl’s face. The mouth looked grim, almost cruel, as she looked down on the man she had come to kill. What was he to do about her? He could see nothing but a vista of troubles from her presence. She might even interfere with his own plans and insist on playing some silly role with her bow and arrow. Bond made up his mind. He just could not afford to take chances. One short tap at the base of the skull and he would gag her and tie her up until it was all over. Bond reached softly for the butt of his automatic.