The green telephone rang. ‘Three Goldfingers, sir, but two of them are dead. The third’s a Russian post office in Geneva. Got a hairdressing business. Slips the messages into the right-hand coat pocket when he brushes the customers down. He lost a leg at Stalingrad. Any good, sir? There’s plenty more on him.’
‘No thanks. That couldn’t be my man.’
‘We could put a trace through CID Records in the morning. Got a picture, sir?’
Bond remembered the Leica film. He hadn’t even bothered to have it developed. It would be quicker to mock up the man’s face on the Identicast. He said, ‘Is the Identicast room free?’
‘Yes, sir. And I can operate it for you if you like.’
‘Thanks. I’ll come down.’
Bond told the switchboard to let heads of sections know where he would be and went out and took the lift down to Records on the first floor.
The big building was extraordinarily quiet at night. Be neath the silence there was a soft whisper of machinery and hidden life – the muffled clack of a typewriter as Bond passed a door, a quickly suppressed stammer of radio static as he passed another, the soft background whine of the ventilation system. It gave you the impression of being in a battleship in harbour.
The Records duty officer was already at the controls of the Identicast in the projection room. He said to Bond, ‘Could you give me the main lines of the face, sir? That’ll help me leave out the slides that are obviously no good.’
Bond did so and sat back and watched the lighted screen.
The Identicast is a machine for building up an approximate picture of a suspect – or of someone who has perhaps only been glimpsed in a street or a train or in a passing car. It works on the magic lantern principle. The operator flashes on the screen various head-shapes and sizes. When one is recognized it stays on the screen. Then various haircuts are shown, and then all the other features follow and are chosen one by one – different shapes of eyes, noses, chins, mouths, eyebrows, cheeks, ears. In the end there is the whole picture of a face, as near as the scanner can remember it, and it is photographed and put on record.
It took some time to put together Goldfinger’s extraordinary face, but the final result was an approximate likeness in monochrome. Bond dictated one or two notes about the sunburn, the colour of the hair and the expression of the eyes, and the job was done.
‘Wouldn’t like to meet that on a dark night,’ commented the man from Records. ‘I’ll put it through to CID when they come on duty. You should get the answer by lunch time.’
Bond went back to the seventh floor. On the other side of the world it was around midnight. Eastern stations were closing down. There was a flurry of signals that had to be dealt with, the night’s log to be written up, and then it was eight o’clock. Bond telephoned the canteen for his breakfast. He had just finished it when there came the harsh purr of the red telephone. M! Why the hell had he got in half an hour early?
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Come up to my office, 007. I want to have a word before you go off duty.’
‘Sir.’ Bond put the telephone back. He slipped on his coat and ran a hand through his hair, told the switchboard where he would be, took the night log and went up in the lift to the eighth and top floor. Neither the desirable Miss Moneypenny nor the Chief of Staff was on duty. Bond knocked on M’s door and went in.
‘Sit down, 007.’ M was going through the pipe-lighting routine. He looked pink and well scrubbed. The lined sailor’s face above the stiff white collar and loosely tied spotted bow tie was damnably brisk and cheerful. Bond was conscious of the black stubble on his own chin and of the all-night look of his skin and clothes. He sharpened his mind.
‘Quiet night?’ M had got his pipe going. His hard, healthy eyes regarded Bond attentively.